A Quote by Naseeruddin Shah

An actor can never voice his opinion through films. All an actor does is convey what the director and writer want to say. You are a mouthpiece of their ideas. Your ideas reflect only in your choice of movies.
You grow up loving movies, and your first instinct is you want to be an actor, because those are the people you see in the movies. But when you actually become an actor, you're like, 'Oh, wait, this is actually only a small portion of the storytelling. If I want to really tell a story, I'd want to be a director.'
In this day and age, if you're aspiring to be an actor, and you're putting all your eggs in one basket, you could be disappointed. I started out as an actor, but I forced myself to be a writer, even though I wasn't very good at it and had never written. I don't think I ever passed an English course in my life. My first 8 to 10 scripts were pretty horrendous, but I stayed at it until I eventually found a voice and a subject that people were interested in. So, I recommend that you go out and try to be as versatile as possible: writer, actor, producer and especially director.
If you hear a good idea, capture it; write it down. Don't trust your memory. Then on a cold wintry evening, go back through your journal, the ideas that changed your life, the ideas that saved your marriage, the ideas that bailed you out of bankruptcy, the ideas that helped you become successful, the ideas that made you millions. What a good review-going back over the collection of ideas that you gathered over the years. So be a collector of good ideas for your business, for your relationships, for your future.
I love voice over work. To me, voice over and animation is such an art, because you focus solely on your voice. You do not focus on how to speak, combined with facial expressions, movement, etc. You as the actor need to convey all those things with only your voice.
With most good scripts and good shows, they expect the actor to bring some of their ideas to the backstory of the character. It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out during the process.
I love the variety of films. In theater, you go into a room and the director runs the room, so you all work to his or her method. On film, if an actor or an actress is in for a day or two, the director has to get out of that actor what they need, so they have to change and adapt to that actor's technique.
Never stop. Never stop fighting. Never stop dreaming. And don’t be afraid of wearing your heart on your sleeve - in declaring the films that you love, the films that you want to make, the life that you’ve had, and the lives you can help reflect in cinema. For myself, for a long time… maybe I felt inauthentic or something, I felt like my voice wasn’t worth hearing, and I think everyone’s voice is worth hearing. So if you’ve got something to say, say it from the rooftops.
I feel whatever an actor does on screen is something the actor 'does,' and what the director can do is to tell, talk or instruct. So, all the credit for an actor's performance goes to the actor alone.
You've got to do the big studio movies to get your name, but as an actor and for your own well-being you kind of need to step back from that occasionally and do the smaller films. In the end, that's what helps you learn and makes you a better actor.
There's no such thing as good ideas and bad ideas. There are only your own ideas and other people's. If you want someone to like your idea, tell him he said it first last week and you just remembered it.
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.
You can say something that can really help and actor and you can say something that can really get in the way of an actor's performance, kind of cut them off from their instincts and really get into their heads. And every actor's different. Every actor requires something different. Being an actor, for me, was the greatest training to be a writer and director.
It would be a dream to do a film with Pedro Almodovar and that whole crew of Spaniards. There's this Argentinian actor who's one of my favorite actors in the whole wide world. His name is Ricardo Darin, and he's a brilliant actor. He does a lot of Argentinian films, and I know he does a lot of European films, as a Spanish actor.
Your job, as an actor, is never to just do what you're told. That's boring, and life is too short. It's your job to bring something, and it will either be to other people's taste or your own taste, and you have to try things out. Actors say, "Well, as long as the director's happy," but I don't believe that and I don't agree with that. I want the director to be happy, but if I'm not happy, I won't sleep at night.
I'm a writer-director-actor, which I've always kind of enjoyed. I compared it to the Olympic biathlon. "Not only can he cross-country ski, but he's a terrific marksman as well." I want people to say, "You mean that writer performed a tracheotomy?" That's right, I do everything.
I do think it's a very good way to describe what a great actor does. You're both acknowledging the authority of the director and the necessity of the actor to push back and find their own voice.
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