I'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.
You spend enough time on set as an actor and it's great when a director was at some point an actor or understands acting. They're able to finesse performances out of you that a lot directors can't get.
I would like you to consider the difference in the time from 1963 to date. The FBI, at that time, was headed by Mr. Hoover who had been appointed Director continuously. He had, I would say, a good reputation.
I think the wonderful thing about doing theater is that it's more of an actor's medium. I think that film is more of a director's medium. You can't edit something out on stage. It's there.
They fired director Richard Donner because they didn't want to pay him, and he's the reason the franchise became so successful in the first place. There's a big part of Superman II that he did that no one has ever seen.
Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.
I just like to keep things small and subtle and authentic, and ground everything in reality. So that is something that I feel is my strength as a director and I try to achieve as an actor.
When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.
The Dead was cool, It's a great horror story. I went to the casting director of this movie and talked to him, then they called my agent and had me come in and read for it and they wanted to use me.
You hope and pray that you'll get involved with a director that you understand and who has the same sensibility as you do and knows how to push you and bring out the best in you.
I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.
I don't have a director. The audience directs me.
The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.
For me, it's important that the script is good. Then a good director will want to make it.
When someone calls me a blogger, I think, 'That's one of the things I used to do.' I'm a creative director for my shoe brand; I'm the editor-in-chief of 'The Blonde Salad,' which is a website and not just a blog anymore.
On stage, the audience watches from a fixed viewpoint and the director cannot retake something he doesn't like. It has to work straight through.
I have only one rule in acting - trust the director and give him heart and soul.
What a casting director does is they're a connector.
I don't read reviews, and it's not because I don't think I can learn something, I'm sure I could learn a lot. I just that I feel very passionately about the work and especially when you're doing theater, you really only need one director and when you read reviews, you feel like you have twelve, because you respond to them, naturally.
I view the whole thing as a collaboration. As an actor, I always found that to be the most freeing thing, when the director would collaborate with you, so that together you'd come up with something exponentially better.
There are still people who have an issue working with a woman director. Women can be viewed as 'difficult' even though they work in the same way as men.
The first heart you win over is that casting director. In first meetings, they'll be the ones who see your pitch for the character. And then as you get further up, they'll be the ones reading with you in front of the network.
I am a fan of the monster and horror genre but that's not my style as a director.
Every part I've done has been for one reason or another-money, or the part, or the director, or the location. I'd like to get one thing that's all of those combined.
On the stage, you alone hold the key, and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.
When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.
I need to be on the same page as the director.
My approach to working in movies is to empower the director to have power over me and to really support his vision because he's the guy, at the end of the day, who's going to put it all together.
When Ron Howard does 'Rush,' he has to learn and steep himself in F1 culture and European racing culture, and that's part of the fun of the gig. You learn to learn. Your real skill as a director is being a learner and an observer. You're constantly learning another thing in context.
'Drive' came to me because the casting director knew my manager and called and said, 'You've always talked to me about Albert wanting to play the heavy. I think he should read this.' My ears just perked up.
I am working as public relations director for the Tour de France and maintaining my farm.
The joy for me of television is the sort of family feeling of being involved with an ensemble - the cast and the crew and the director of photography and the guys in the camera truck - and you're all coming together. There's a great feeling when that is a successful unit, a successful family.
Indeed, the actor's lot is a much harder one than that of the director's, from one simple standpoint: The actor has to play the eight shows a week.
Professionally speaking, the proudest moment was when I booked the 'Human Stain.' I knew it had Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise on board, and the director Robert Benton was an academy award winner for 'Kramer vs Kramer.'
Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are - maybe not all of them. But it's up to you to put in the amount. It's up to the director to nag you until you get it right.
As a producer, I probably am a little stronger than most, since I was a director originally.