You can act on camera: insider tips for delivering a great performance every time

DIRECTING ACTORS: CREATING MEMORABLE PERFORMANCES......Page 6
TABLE OF CONTENTS......Page 7
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 14
INTRODUCTION......Page 15
“Of course the film director should know acting, its history and its techniques. The more he knows about acting, the more at ease he will be with actors. At one period of his growth, he should force himself on stage or before the camera so he knows this experientially, too.......Page 64
“Almost every actor goes into almost every picture very frightened. He is positive he really can’t do it. The bigger the star, the more frightened he is.” — Paul Mazursky......Page 65
“Any director’s job is to make an actor understand that you’re giving everything of yourself to a part… It’s kind of a love aftair, it really is. You get very close doing movies. It sounds really corny but it’s true. There’s not a lot that’s left unsaid when you go in the trailer with them. They’re naked, they’re stark fucking naked. We all are. As long as you break down the barriers, and are in it together, then out of that nakedness will come something good.” — Adrian Lyne......Page 67
“The best actors are children and dogs because they’re not acting at all.” — Helen Mirren......Page 74
“On the set, [Woody Allen] leaves actors alone, he’s always about loosening it up, and I tried to do the same. I don’t like too much direction myself, it stops me from thinking or feeling… If somebody talks to me too much I clam up.” — Diane Keaton......Page 83
“Learn the lines and don’t bump into the furniture”......Page 90
“Somewhere along the line, someone — I can’t remember who it was — told me to stop acting with a capital ‘A,’ not to perform, not to be big, not to entertain, just to be. And to … listen to other people when they’re talking. That was probably the most important thing I ever learned.” — Dennis Franz, “NYPD Blue”......Page 94
“I think that if you have a talent for acting, it is the talent for listening.” — Morgan Freeman......Page 96
“All you have to do is look at Anthony Hopkins’ eyes and you get so much, your job is cut in half there’s so much in his eyes. He was lovely, generous, moving.” — Joan Allen......Page 98
“It took me years to understand fully why [my teacher] was right, and… never to plan how I would say a line, only to think of the situation, and listen to the other actors… What is hard, and really has to be worked at, is being able to go with whatever comes up from other actors or the director at each moment of a performance and not to try to force a repetition of something that went well the day before.… The real work of acting is letting go.” — Vanessa Redgrave......Page 102
“Most actors’ problems, professional or amateur, deal with tension and there are a lot of devices and ways of eliminating it. In a very professional actor the tension is because they haven’t made a choice that has taken enough of their mental interest. In other words, they haven’t made a vital enough choice; it’s not up to a level that will engage their imagination and get them into pretending unself-consciously”......Page 108
“Finally, you know, I consider that my profession as a director is not exactly like a supervisor. No. We are, simply, midwives. The actor has something inside himself but very often he doesn’t realize what he has in mind, in his own heart, and you have to tell him. You have to help him find himself.” — Jean Renoir......Page 111
“I’m interested in the flip side, the B-side of people. As an actor, your challenge is to get your mind around the psychology of another human being — and the bigger the polarity, the more dramatic that is.” — Ralph Fiennes......Page 113
“It’s easy to sit back and judge someone, but I am not in a position to judge Nixon. As an actor, I can’t judge because moral judgment gets in the way of the characterization. If you start doing that, you end up playing the character like a zombie or a vaudeville villain.” — Anthony Hopkins......Page 114
“I…build on my own experience, on that of others—on everything I have heard and seen… The day Ingmar gives me the manuscript he also gives me the right to feel that henceforward I understand the part best. She becomes my reality as much as she is Ingmar’s.”—Liv Ullmann......Page 166
“By taking on roles of characters that were unlike me, I began to discover those characters in me.”—Al Pacino......Page 185
“Skillful actors acquire great expertise, and the greater the expertise, the more difficult it becomes to [surrender],”......Page 188
“…Then there are other directors I watch and wonder why they get out of bed in the morning, because of the stunning lack of homework they do.”—Anthony Hopkins......Page 191
CASTING......Page 280
“When I met Marty [Scorsese], I was keenly aware of my meeting a part of myself. With Marty, I was getting to know myself better. The work between us was never a case of you walk over there and then turn around.’ It was about finding what we were searching for in my own being.”—Harvey Keitel......Page 292
“Once they’re in that starting-gate position and ready to go, it’s really a case of nurturing, and trusting, and letting them have a good time. I don’t even necessarily mean, by a good time, laughing on the set—although we have a lot of that at times. But what I mean is being allowed to make mistakes, being allowed to try things. The key is that you all agree that you’re making the same film.”— Martin Scorsese......Page 336
ABOUT THE AUTHOR......Page 378
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