A Quote by Michael Caine

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

Michael Caine

Quote Topics

Actor Cannot Control Controls Director Movie Own Stage Your

Quote Author

Michael Caine
English - Actor
Born: March 14, 1933

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.

Henry A. Kissinger

The director is the most important because, ultimately, as an actor, when you watch a movie, it looks like an actor is giving a performance, and they kind of are. But, what's actually happening is that an actor has given a bunch of ingredients over to a director, who then constructs a performance. That's movie-making.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

When there's an actor involved, the actor's talking to the director or the director's talking to the actor. But when there are not those two people interacting, it's all one person in your own mind, you have to be so extra-clear about what you need.

Cherien Dabis

In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera.

Jamie Foxx

My attitude as an actor, because I'm a stage actor, is whatever the director tells you to do, you try it. You don't resist what a director is giving you.

Anthony Heald

As an actor on a film, you have no control over the final product - your job is to make a director's vision come true. So, you need to have total faith in them and add your own creativity and opinions and energy, but you have to really give over responsibility, and sometimes that can feel terrifying.

Maya Hawke

It is one of the few elements in the process that a director really, really can't control: an actor's performance. If you have a director that understands that, it's comforting to an actor. You're starting the relationship more as a collaborator, rather than as an employee or some kind of a soldier trying to execute something you don't organically feel.

Jason Bateman

As an actor, you are sort of only in charge of yourself. All you can really control is your performance. You don't know what they're going to do with it in the editing room, what they're going to cut out, which take they're going to use. You know, your control is very limited. As a director, it's ultimately your piece. You have a lot more responsibility, but you also have a lot more creative control. It's scary, but also liberating in a way.

Gillian Jacobs

I mean, life is kind of like your own movie. You collect your characters to play your friends or acquaintances, your lovers. You're the casting director of your own life.

Julia Fox

There was a choice of being a director who's more familiar with the technicality of doing a movie, like learning about the camera and filters and setup, or being a director who can actually talk to actors. And I always wanted to be an actor's director.

Lexi Alexander

I never wanted to be an actor. Because when you're an actor, you depend on other people to come to you with scripts. You can't create your own. Unless you are a Raj Kapoor, who was a producer-director.

Vikram Bhatt

As an actor, you have to give up all control to the director. He's the boss, and has all the power. I'm a control freak, so that's really hard for me.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun.

Jack Nicholson

As producers, we can influence where the budget goes, but only the director really controls what tone, what type of movie you are trying to make.

Michelle Yeoh

I start at square one with every role. If I let myself feel pressure, it would crush me. The truth is that everyone pays attention to who's number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. Sometimes that's a palpable thing, but other times it's not. No actor has control of that. All you can control is your own passion for doing the work in the first place.