As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don't get to collaborate with other directors that much.
When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.
I feel I should defer to the writers and the directors because they're the ones who have the complete vision. They see things through from the beginning to the end. I'm responsible for one small part, so my scope is much more limited than theirs.
I think actors make for very good directors, and I would like to do that one day.
Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.
I've worked with a couple of female directors now, and I think that they're amazing. As good or better than guy directors.
I have been fortunate to have worked with immensely talented writers and directors who have had faith in me. There's been very little hard work but a lot of learning. I have learnt from each of my characters, and I think that's rather amazing.
I surrender to my directors. I do that because I respect them immensely. In fact, a director's talent scares me. I admit that they're more intelligent than me, and I submit to that, as an assistant director does. Even when I have suggestions to make, I don't state them strongly.
As a professional, it pains me to watch a movie that is botched and amateurish. I prefer directors who have control of both their craft and their ideas.
People attach too much to the idea of being a model, that you can only be a certain way to have done it. You will always be dealing with it. You're an actor who used to be a model who never trained; there are not many directors queuing up.
I love acting, every job is a dream job when you're an actor. I'd like to do eventually more film work and to collaborate with the best actors and directors in film.
I guess maybe directors see a face that seems to have been lived in. I know that my face has been lived in, yeah.
I was, in my day, one of the best directors of episodic TV around.
For me, the most exciting thing is that Jane Campion is a woman we can all really look up to. She doesn't have the body of work that some other directors do - no woman director does - but her work is so consistently original, wonderful, masterful.
Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.
There's nothing like sitting in a completely quiet room, and then the strings start up. It's like when you go to the cinema - the first two or three minutes of any film are amazing. Because the screen is so big. The scale. Directors can pretty much do anything for those first few minutes.
A lot of directors straight out of film school are very technically minded, but they don't have an understanding of actors or how to talk to them.
Is it 'left' to insist that presidents and CIA directors adhere to the law? I don't think so. I think it's American.
I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to work with some directors and some actors I wouldn't have dared to think I would work with one day.
I owe a lot to my time on 'House of Cards' because, up until I booked that show, I had been working consistently for 12 years, but I wasn't working on anything that mattered in the way 'House of Cards' did to its audience, to casting directors, to directors and producers. The show hit this sweet spot.
I always say that in my career as an actress, I've always worked with people like David Lynch or Guy Maddin or Peter Weir who are considered not mainstream directors and that could be because they are like my dad. They are pioneers, and pioneers, by definition, invent something new.
I've worked with some actors who have such thick skins and think they are so extraordinary. I'll think, 'Have you stopped learning?' They stop listening to directors or other actors and do the same thing again and again.
I am always looking for what piece, what artists, what playwrights, what directors, what subject matter is going to catalyze an audience.
Most directors have little lists in their heads of people they really want to work with.
Good directors give short and specific instructions to their actors.
I can say pretty confidently that I am not the right guy to do a superhero movie, just because I was not a comic book kid. I don't know that mythology, and I don't have it ingrained in me in the way that a lot of these other directors do.
As for the Canadians - good actors and good directors are sometimes taken by the American market, you know, if they're good enough.
