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It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with.

My view of actors is that basically they're all harmless lunatics who'd be on the psychiatrist's couch, except that we get this sort of catharsis every six months or so, and we go and be absolutely someone else.

Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really.

The kind of actors I admire move through different characters and genres.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

I know what actors fear, what they like; I know how to get things out of them and I listen to them better, since I've been there.

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance.

Actors are there to represent the human condition back to itself. It's never about the actor. It's about the content. That's what I strive for in my work.

The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it.

I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue.