What do actors really want? To be great actors? Yes, but you can't buy talent, so it's best to leave the word 'great' out of it. I think to be believed, onstage or onscreen, is the one hope that all actors share.
I hear about actors being exterior actors and actors being instinctual actors and I always think it's crap. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that good actors do both - they do inside-outward and they do outside-inward. You can't not do both.
You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.
Basically, I would like to be considered for roles that are well-written. I think that part of the problem that we've had as actors is that they insist on looking at us as Latino actors and not as actors, period.
When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman's and it didn't bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.
I want people to see my heart, what I feel - not as one of America's best black actors but as one of the best actors.
As a director, you have to know what actors are doing. You're the one telling them what to do. The actors' job is to come prepared to the set, but sometimes, if they're beginning actors or people who are non-actors, you have to teach them how to act.
I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.
I think it's worse for actors, though, because people have to choose you. As a director, I get to choose the actors, but most of the time, actors have to be chosen in order to work.
There's not a lot of talking between actors - either between actors or between actors and directors. People think that they sit in rooms and talk about psychology and motivations. I don't think that happens much.
There are so many brilliant, trained actors of color in America. If you just think about it, every year in the spring Julliard and NYU and Yale and hundreds of schools across the country graduate classes of trained actors, and in those classes are actors of color. So to say that there aren't enough actors of color is factually inaccurate.
It's my goal to help actors achieve their best work, and I think I speak the same language as actors, so I understand how they do it, and I just love being able to create the playground in which they build their beautiful sandcastle.
I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say.
It takes awhile for writers to get to know actors rhythms, not just as actors, but what they bring to the characters. I think it takes a few episodes for the writing room to catch up to the actors and vice versa.
Comedy, I'm still in awe of. I think you need a comic genius somewhere in the mix. It's got to be the actor or someone. But the 'comic genius' actors are the darkest people on the planet - and that kind of scares me!
I enjoy comedic things. People don't understand it's the hardest thing to do. We have a ratio of 25-to-1 between good dramatic actors and people who are considered good comic actors.