A Quote by James Cromwell

Usually, I'm the kind of actor where you show me once or twice, I can do it. I don't do it creatively, but I know how to do the process. — © James Cromwell
Usually, I'm the kind of actor where you show me once or twice, I can do it. I don't do it creatively, but I know how to do the process.
As an actor, you see a sliver of how the show is made, but to see the actual writing process and the re-writing process and the casting process and art direction and set design - all of this is happening in a very intense period.
It's kind of my biggest fear: thinking I know somebody I'm going to be, and then I don't. It's probably only happened to me once or twice, but that was enough for me to definitely not do a role unless I 100% can be that person.
Very occasionally I hire an actor and get it wrong. The actor just doesn't trust the process or me as fully as I thought they would. In this case, you can be quite sure that if an actor is untrusting, it's got nothing to do with me or the process.
I don't know how to make magic. For most songwriter's that has only happened once or twice, and I don't know how to re-create that. I know that there are some tricks and tools, but the magic is the amazing part.
I'm sensitive to how people are feeling if they feel like they got it wrong, and sensitive to the people who are kind of gloating that they knew all along, they figured it out. I'm loving them through this process, because I know that it took me a while once I found out that it was me.
Suzanna Collins was very supportive, but we very much wanted her blessing on casting. In production, she visited us once, but she really was not involved in the production process. She's seen the Hunger Games movie twice, in the post-production process, once as an early cut and then once when it was finished.
I was very combative as a creative person at that time [while The Ben Stiller Show]. I didn't understand how to play politics with the studios. I didn't know how to creatively collaborate with the people who were paying the bills, and that came up all the time on every project I was doing, and it took me a really long time to figure out how to collaborate in a healthy way.
We tried to do a show once every three weeks to a month. We'd always do a new show. It was not successful. It did not become the Matt & Ben show, but it taught me what I like to do as an actor and what I like to do comedically.
It might sound naive, but for me, you know, for me, the important part is kind of making process. So I'm not super result oriented, and I just, like, kind of getting lost in the process of making something.
I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.
We don't think about how the songs are going to translate so much during the writing process. Once the song is recorded, and once we're mixing, that's when it occurs to me. Then you start rehearsing to play shows. I never concern myself about how we're going to pull it off live, because I know we'll figure out a way to do it.
Let me show you how to drive me crazy,Let me show you how to make me feel so good,Let me show you how to take me to the edge of the stars and back again.You've gotta show me how to drive you crazy,You've gotta show me all the things you wanna happen to you,We've gotta tell each other everything, we always wanted someone to do.
Not all television scripts are created equal. And the process is ridiculous. They send you a script and want you in the next morning. That's not how acting works. You can do anything to me as an actor; I'm a very resilient guy. Just don't rush me. If you ask me to do it immediately with no time to prepare, I know you have contempt for actors.
I think there's something so wonderful about being part of the process from the seed of the idea to seeing it come to life on a screen. And to have a hand in that creatively, not just showing up as an actor for hire.
Whether or not I am a 'character actor' or any other kind of actor, I really don't know. When people call me a 'character actor,' I fail to understand what it means.
How you look is part of what acting is, but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting, 'You're a character actor in a leading man's body,' and I can live with that.
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