Stephen Daldry Quotes

With theater, you have to really be able to listen and to respond to other people on stage. You're all constantly on your toes. And then with film and television, you can get a second take and things like that.

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

The rehearsal is where it all happens for an actor.

I didn't really understand what you did when you went in front of the camera. And then suddenly I just understood it. When you're in a play, you carry the story, but you don't have to do that in film.

The process of rehearsal means you learn so much and really get the chance to develop your work on a character.

I have a coach, but I'm not theater-trained or a technical actor.

It's not like every actor needs to train, but an actor will either develop their process through training or through working.

Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the director's eyes, you 'get it right' does not allow for very much creative freedom... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater.

As an actor, I had noticed very vividly that very few directors know how to direct actors because they haven't done it.

At Julliard, they don't teach you where to move your face for the camera, you know?

As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can't be plastic.

It's funny because, if you're not an actor, people always tend to say, 'How do you memorize all those lines? Is that really hard?' I'm always like, 'That's just a small part of it. I have to seek my craft and my emotions' - you know, all this gross, actor-y stuff.

Sometimes you can fall into bad habits on film or rest on your laurels, and you can't do that in theater. I think it's such a useful tool as a person and as an actor to go back and forth between those two mediums.

Honestly, soaps are great training. You're doing 90-plus pages a day. It was my acting class, where I built my foundation for showing up and being professional.

I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.

As an actor, Coppola trained me. That was my training ground.

I think film and television actually is a lot harder. Acting onstage is physically more arduous, but to get to emotional truth within a scene, it's much tougher to do it on film.

I like to rehearse before blocking.

I love the interactive nature of theater. I just craved it. As much as I love working on a film or TV set, most of the storytelling happens in the editing, whereas when you're doing a play, the storytelling is in your hands as an actor.

I think L.A. actors don't have much continuity, so you kind of have to force the issue by doing plays and putting up scenes and staying in class.

I don't think film actors need training, really, but I needed any help I could get.

I don't offer advice to actors only because I've seen actors become successful through ways that would never even occur to me or that wouldn't work for me. But this has worked for me: Never memorizing a scene.

Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.

As an actor just learning the craft, you literally do a scene with Jimmy Gandolfini, and you walk away a better actor.

After being signed for 'Madras Cafe,' I joined Jogi Singh's acting classes, where I learned the basic nuances.