I know in Britain with 'Doctor Who' all the classic actors, and the people who you'd really want to, work on the show. I like that the fact that 'Torchwood' has actors that want to be involved from the stage. It has raised our game, and I'm just happy for good actors who want to be in sci-fi shows who love the genre.
I like to work and there's no movies for actors, period, especially black actors. When white actors are like, 'Man, there's no work out there,' then black actors are like, 'Are you kidding me?'
You work with every actor differently. It's like if you're a mother, if you have children, some children need more discipline. Other children you back off of a little bit and let them be. It's the same way with actors. Some actors need a lot of hand holding. Other actors like to be let be and you let them go. Some actors like to be nudged just a little bit. Some actors don't mind line readings.
Actors want to work with you but they want you to do their thing. Actors, whom I love with a blind partiality, sometimes they want to be soloists in the symphony, not a part of the orchestra.
Actors and directors work on things together. That's how I like to work, anyway. I don't want to be told what to do. I want to share it with someone and work it out together.
The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.
There are a lot of actors in the world, there's a small number that actually get to work as actors, and there is a tiny group of actors that are celebrated in the way that I have been. I feel incredibly lucky.
I don't really like to work with actors that work a lot and are very well established already. In a way, I like to nurture talent and have it burst on the scene.
Actors want to act; actors want to emote. It's like the emotional equivalent of tearing your shirt off and screaming to the heavens: you want to express, and you want to be seen to be expressing.
I like to work with actors that have varied experiences. But I don't choose them because of their experience, I choose them because of qualities I think would make an interesting character and to me there is no one way to direct actors, there is only one way to collaborate with one person.
For most actors, it's such a struggle to get work. Once they have it, they feel that there's an enormous amount of pressure on them to make it work, and have everyone love them. In my case, it was never like that. It was just about working with the people that I want to work with, and telling the stories that I want to tell, you know?
You work with every actor differently. It's like if you're a mother, if you have children, some children need more discipline. Other children, you back off of a little bit and let them be. It's the same way with actors. Some actors need a lot of hand holding. Other actors like to be let be, and you let them go.
I want to play everything. I want to be like Christian Bale: I want to be able to be Batman and then, like, his character in 'The Fighter.' That is what is so impressive about really good actors, that they can be character actors and leading men at the same time.
Because I produce a comedy festival and because I write and all of that stuff, I've seen the relationship that actors can create, in a bad way sometimes, with the rest of the people they work with. I just want to be a good representation of, 'Actors are great! They're not what some people might think they are.'
I want to get out of the way of the actors. I want to get out of their eye lines. I want to them to stop thinking they're making a movie. I want them to just go and live. It's like you take these great actors and put them in an aquarium of life, and just watch them swim. That's what makes editing tough because you get all these beautiful, unplanned moments.
I really like to work with theater actors. Theater actors tend to do lots of independent movies, and those are the actors that I like.