A Quote by Jared Harris

One of the reasons why good actors are good is that they have poor impulse control. If you put them in front of a camera, they respond as if it was actually happening, in real time, rather than doing it after several takes.
I like to think in camera, but at the last minute the most important thing is that there is something happening between the actors. But good actors can have a lot of scenes going around them but sometimes it sort of helps the performance because it takes their mind off of who they are supposed to be.
I ask my assistants if they're retarded all the time. When the camera is on you, of course, actors have the ability to make it real. For me, if I'm not talking, it is a problem. I have so much more respect for actors after being in front of the camera, and I realize that the hardest part is when you're not talking. Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.
Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.
I prefer to take actors and put them in real settings and real locations and real situations rather than create artificial locations that serve the characters. It's just much easier when you are walking down the street with your actors to do that in a real street that's still open with people on it, rather than to close it off and bring in extras.
I don't like to put too much effort into things. I find that once you get involved with special effects it is no longer about what is happening in front of the camera and I really want to concentrate on what is happening in front of the camera, like the man apparently peeing on the surface of the screen.
Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.
I love actors. Part of that is my theater background and being a writer who cares about performance. Actors have usually chosen their profession because they have a dream of doing it and they want to express something about the world. That's the same thing that I have with writing. Most of the good actors get into it for those reason, rather than for reasons of fame or fortune, or anything like that, and that's where I'm coming from, as a storyteller.
A good director creates a playground for actors, and lets them go. The trick for a good director is in casting properly, and creating the playroom, and then they'll get stuff that they don't expect, and can't even direct. All the audience wants to believe is that whatever is happening, it is happening for the first time. They want to see the people within the work exchanging dialogue and action in that moment. There are not a lot of actors that can do that.
I really trust the authenticity of real people and my job is to get them to be themselves in front of the camera. Often what happens is, you'll get a newcomer in front of the camera and they'll freeze up or they imitate actors or other performances that they've admired and so they stop becoming themselves. And so my job as the director is just to always return them to what I first saw in them, which was simply an uncensored human being.
There is a wilful lemming-like persistance in remaking past successes time after time. They can't make them as good as they are in our memories, but they go on doing them and each time it's a disaster. Why don't we remake some of our bad pictures - I'd love another shot at 'Roots of Heaven' - and make them good?
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.
A lot of the people I'm working with are not actors, or it's their first time in a movie. I'm not trying to shape performances, coax performances out of them. It's more like I want to put them in situations that naturally work or allow them to be themselves. If it's not happening, I'll just completely switch it up, rather than trying to make it work.
It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.
I want to prove that actors are good, not just at working in front of the camera.
One of the reasons why I thought it was a good decision to put Def Jux on hold is that it's a hell of a lot easier to dismiss something as a movement than to dismiss individuals making good records.
I'm realizing that the people who criticize what I'm doing, their intentions and comments are not actually real.There's nothing happening in the real world outside of whatever they're writing on the internet. Whereas for the people who feel inspired by what I'm doing, there's something so concrete and powerful in what's happening when they feel empowered. There's actually some kind of growth or self-acceptance, some kind of self-love that's actually being triggered, hopefully. And that's real.
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