Quotes

There's no such thing as a small part. There are just small actors.

If a director comes in from California and doesn't know the city at all, he picks the Empire State Building and all the postcard shots, and that, of course, isn't the city.

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.

[from 1973] All I want to do is get better and quantity can help me to solve my problems. I'm thrilled by the idea that I'm not even sure how many films I've done. If I don't have a script I adore, I do one I like. If I don't have one I like, I do one that has an actor I like or that presents some technical challenge.

[October 2007] Melodrama is a much maligned genre. And I hope we can bring it back into fashion. I always think of melodrama as the thing we are all capable of that's swept under the rug.

[October 2007] Anything you can do with film, I can do with HD.

[on Christopher Reeve] What seemed such a nice, simple, artless performance in Superman (1978) was the finest kind of acting. Reeve's timing -- and humor -- has to be just about perfect to make the character come off.

[on Paul Newman] Paul's always been one of the best actors we've got, but there was that great stone face and those gorgeous blue eyes and a lot of people assumed he couldn't act. He got relegated to leading man parts and he wasn't using a quarter of his talent. Now he's able to cut loose and do sensational work.

[on Tab Hunter] Also talented, but primarily a character actor, yet always used as a leading man because he's so pretty. I've seen him do character parts in which he's really great. But, as a leading man, he tightens up. Mostly, he turned to character work in American television when his Hollywood career started going sour. Then, he played the roles of psychotic killers and so forth, and his talent became clear.

[on Ralph Richardson] There's no secret about the fact that Ralph is terrified of the camera. But, at the same time, he is unquestionably a great actor. Yet, he looks to a director, too.

[on Akira Kurosawa] Kurosawa never affected me directly in terms of my own movie-making because I never would have presumed that I was capable of that perception and that vision.

While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film is which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing.

Look, on a movie, we're all giving each other something precious. No bullshit, I can't think of a better job. It's not a technique. I'm not a fool. I think I'm a talented man. But then there's luck. I think there's a reason luck doesn't always happen to others. They don't know how to prepare the groundwork for luck. I do.

[on actors] I understand what they're going through. The self-exposure, which is at the heart of all their work, is done using their own body. It's their sexuality, their strength or weakness, their fear. And that's extremely painful. And when they're not doing it in their performance, they pull back. They get shy. Paul Newman, who I worked with on The Verdict (1982), is one of the shyest men I've ever met. That's why rehearsal is so important.

[on being awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2007] I wanted one, damn it, and I felt I deserved one.

[on the art of film] I don't think art changes anything. I do it because I like it and it's a wonderful way to spend your life.

[on New York City] Locations are characters in my movies. The city is capable of portraying a mood a scene requires.

While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing.

If I'm moved by a scene, a situation... I have to assume that that's going to work for an audience.

In Hollywood, actors learn to act from watching television. In New York people learn to act by walking down the street.

I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran (1985) in a particular way. His answer was that if he'd panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he'd panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport.

I like being described as the actor's director because it comes primarily from the fact that they open up with me more than they do with most directors.

Good acting is really self-revaluation, and that's a very painful, complicated, and frightening process, and it takes time to get people free enough to do that.

I don't have any particular theory on adapting stage works to film. I take them one at a time. I didn't open up Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) at all, except for that scene on the porch, which was important, given the title. I don't believe in opening it up if you lose tension, lose characterizations, or lose the story. I opened up Deathtrap (1982) very, very little because it would have let the tension out. It's a psychological thing. Confinement can work for you.

There's no real difference in acting between theater and film. Well, there's one difference -- you can get away with more in the theater; you can take it easier than you can in film. But that cliché about how you have to reduce the performance , make it smaller for film, isn't true. You just have to work more honestly.

Directors today - the younger ones - are very different, not better or worse, mind you. I think that Steven Spielberg is as sensitive as I am - probably more so. The primary difference is a subtle yet profound one. I think you can draw a solid line between the directors who were brought up on television - who spent their childhoods watching television - and those who didn't. That reflects the film's content and how the film is shot. Two totally different types of directors and two totally different types of movies.

Goodfellas (1990) is a superb movie. And The Sopranos (1999) is a brilliant television show. And they are very truthful.

The law fascinates me.

As I'm rehearsing, I slowly evolve into the style in which I'm going to shoot the movie.

[on The Hill (1965)] I knew when I was sent that script that Sean (Sean Connery) could act.

[on his film Network (1976) losing the Oscar for Best Picture to Rocky (1976)] There was no trace of an accent. It's embarrassing that Rocky beat us out. Chayefsky (Paddy Chayefsky) was so prescient. Everyone was saying we were going to take it all. And on the flight out to L.A., he said, 'Rocky's going to take Best Picture.' And I said, 'No, no, it's a dopey little movie.' And he said, 'It's just the sort of sentimental crap they love out there.' And he was right.

[on Elia Kazan] What moves me most about his work is his pioneering spirit. Emotions, passions were put up on the screen. That Mediterranean release is responsible for a lot of what we're doing today.

[on being asked "Does it still rankle not to have won an Oscar?"] Sure, and anyone who says it doesn't matter is talking bullshit. Of course it matters! First of all, the difference between winning and losing can be $3 or $4 million on your next fee. So let's start with that. And maybe this is a very subjective reaction, but it seems to me that I've always lost to crap.

I only said Titanic (1997) is unwatchable because one cannot watch it.

[on his experience acting in ...One Third of a Nation... (1939) as a 14-year-old boy] I hated acting in movies and I've understood all about actors ever since...I knew that I could never be a really good actor.

No director is going to give an actor charm. It's something they've either got or they haven't got.

[on Equus (1977)] A boy who blinds six horses is not your average hero. If you're going to show the boy's magnificence and Dysart's envy of him, you've got get into the area of his horror, also.