Director Feedback Quotes

I can count on one hand the directors who actually directed me.

Alan Ball, he's good at challenging his actors, I'll say that.

My scripts are always heavily noted. If I can take a director to one side and say, "Do you mind if we try this?," a few days before, that's usually a better way of doing it then on the day.

I'm not one of those playwrights who says, 'Show up, hit your marks, and don't talk to me!' I always want to hear from the other artists involved, whether it's the director, the lighting tech, or the actors.

Over the years with movies, I've given directors notes.

You got to get used to somebody, when you're acting or going through a scene, somebody yelling, "Do it a little louder!" OK, you do it a little louder.

I remember my very first audition for a film. I was in Seattle. They were taping the session, and I just went crazy. The director finally said, 'Zoe, what are you doing? The camera's right here. Just talk to me.' And it took that director saying that to me to change everything.

In a lot of movies, honestly, the directors don't talk to you that much. Maybe they say, "Faster, slower," whatever. Sometimes they give you little adjustments, because sometimes you want to start out neutral, but a lot of times you wind up directing yourself anyway, just doing what you think is the right thing to do.

There's nothing like an opening night or like the curtain going up and having a full house, but also having weeks and weeks to work with your director and cast members and try to crack the play. It's great.

It was a very hard play [Woman Under the Influence] to do every night. And John Cassavetes said, "Don't worry. Don't even think about it, you're right. I hadn't thought of that." He said, "Just forget it."

That's how I am as a director - if somebody does a really good take, I can't help it, I'm not even aware of it. Actors really, really need positive reinforcement.

Once a composition is complete I sing the track and send it to the director. He sometimes suggests I record them in my voice, and I go ahead.

I'll tell you one thing. I've never heard a director saying that the dailies suck.

Just when you think you're hitting your stride someone will shout "cut" and ask you to move your head to the left. It's such an awkward process. You try to make it passionate but it ends up being mechanical.

I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.

I have to see a definitive cut of the film before I even start thinking about the music, I tell the director what my feelings are and what I would like to do. He accepts what I say or discusses it or destroys it. Eventually, we have to find a compromise.

Kissing scenes are never romantic or sexy. They're actually super technical, like, 'Move your head; you're blocking her light,' or, 'Stop looking like an idiot when you kiss her.'

One of the things I wanted to do was direct. There've been a couple of times that a director will walk up and say something to me, and all it does is make me mad. Inside I'll go, 'Well, that wasn't helpful at all.'

If the director says you can do better, particularly in a love scene, then it is rather embarrassing.

I had no idea what it took to be an actor. Then all of a sudden I found myself cast in a TV drama. The director was very harsh with me. One time, he told me this would be my first and last acting job. I seriously thought that acting was not the right career for me.

I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."

There's a lot to be said for being in a room with a casting agent or a director. There are things you can't really replicate when you're self-taping and there's the bonus of having someone to direct you, which is extremely helpful. The benefit of self-taping is, I suppose, being on your own clock. It's certainly more relaxing to self-tape than to audition with someone in the flesh but I don't know if it's necessarily better.

When I came to England, the first director I met was Charles Sturridge, who told me, 'You speak like somebody out of the 1950s.'

As long as you have a director, that's your feedback. It's the director telling you, "Okay. That was great! Okay. Can we add a little? Can you tweak it like this? Can you make it more high pitched? Can you give it a little growl?"

I generally enjoy the rehearsal process because that's where you can share your ideas, get your thoughts and feelings out and see whether or not they're going to land, whether or not people are going to agree with them, particularly the director. So you can sort out in that process any elements that need to be sorted out before you're on the set, and of course that saves time and it also makes everyone more comfortable working together.