A Quote by Elizabeth Perkins

My oldest step-son wants to direct or produce. As far as being an actor, I've already told them they have to wait until they're 18; I won't take them to auditions. — © Elizabeth Perkins
My oldest step-son wants to direct or produce. As far as being an actor, I've already told them they have to wait until they're 18; I won't take them to auditions.
Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.
When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me. So when David Fincher comes along and wants to direct 'The Social Network,' when Bennett Miller comes along and wants to direct 'Moneyball,' or when Danny Boyle wants to direct 'Jobs'? Hallelujah. I want them directing it.
It's a weird profession, as I don't really consider myself an actor. I did at one point, and I went and started doing auditions, and I was so useless at them and so demoralised by doing audition after audition and not getting them and also not being able to take it in my stride at all. I just felt crushed and worthless.
To produce things and to rear them, To produce, but not to take possession of them, To act, but not to rely on one's own ability, To lead them, but not to master them - This is called profound and secret virtue.
Being an actor, you know what it feels like to be directed, so when the chance comes for you to direct someone else, you know how to approach an actor without scaring them off, without making them clam up, without making them feel insecure, without getting them in their head.
I act, produce, and direct. They are three different jobs all within the same realm of creativity. I enjoy all of them equally, but ultimately, I'm an actor.
And I really also wanted to have the full-body scans to learn if it was anywhere else - and it wasn't - before I told them. So I didn't tell them, until for a week, and then I told them.
Every actor wants to direct and produce, but I made a conscious decision when I was in college to understand the 'business' of 'show business.'
And, for any performer, to be able to go deep into character is fantastic. In film you only get to do that if you're the leading character. But in television you get 18 hours to really test the audience and take them to the edge of how far they will go with this character. I can step over this line and I love that.
It's funny because I've resisted acting as a career for most of my life. But both my parents told me if I ever want to direct, I should act first because no director should direct until they know what it's like to be in the actor's shoes.
The American people, I think, are tired of being told. They're tired of being told this is as good as it gets. They're tired of being told, like Ronald Reagan used to say, that little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives better for us than we can plan them for ourselves.
I loved the domesticity of my life as a struggling actor. When I wasn't going to auditions, I could do things like cook dishes from scratch and take them to parties or be really thoughtful about birthdays and anniversaries.
There's something arbitrary about taking a picture. So I can stand at the edge of a highway and take one step forward and it can be a natural landscape untouched by man and I can take one step back and include a guardrail and change the meaning of the picture radically... I can take a picture of a person at one moment and make them look contemplative and photograph them two seconds later and make them look frivolous.
I hate auditions - when I'm doing them, I can't wait to get out the bleeding door.
You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop.
Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.
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