When I look at a character, whether he’s good or bad, one scene or 10 scenes, I just have to find my way in.
Before I’d written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers – when you’ve got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people’s ability to do that.
I liked a lot of the scenes I did with Ryan Phillippe.
The funny thing about war is that people feel you need to be morally outraged. I feel morally outraged about it, and I’ve been doing it for long enough to feel morally outraged, because I have been in massacre scenes in West Africa, and I’ve been doing this for a long time now.
I remember my first taste of American big movies was ‘Ghost Rider.’ I’m in two little scenes. But for those two little scenes they had 400 extras, upside-down stunt cars, and a fire brigade.
Evictions used to be rare in this country. They used to draw crowds. There are scenes in literature where you can come upon an eviction – like, in ‘Invisible Man’ there’s the famous eviction scene in Harlem, and people are gathered around, and they move the family back in.
If I didn’t write sex scenes, all my characters would head to the kitchen and make cups of tea.
The way a musical can make us feel is unlike anything else, in song and particularly in dance. I think people fly through plate-glass windows when they get shot because movies don’t have dance scenes any more. This is what we do instead.
With a documentary, you can cut away, you can do jump cuts, cut to a photograph at any point to bridge two scenes.
I like doing stuff that is sad or angry. It’s a challenge, because you’re doing a mix of scenes and you’re making a person.
It doesn’t matter about the length of the role. I don’t do films for the number of scenes. I go for the quality of my character in the film and the impact that I will have.
If I had to say the secret recipe for acting melodrama, I think it comes from myself in real life. I have a belief that when I do melo scenes, I try to make them less cheesy.
Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don’t really mean anything.
Fast cutting, loud music, blood spewing everywhere, and gunshots permeating the scenes does not necessarily make for a shocking movie.
Nick Lea is a great actor, and doing scenes with him was always awesome.
Love scenes are extremely difficult. You’re always within a millimeter of sentimentality and ‘yuck.’
When we had the infamous mealtime scenes, food fights would inevitably develop.
You live for those really great scenes where you almost feel that the film has gone beyond what was printed on the script pages and been raised to another level.
When ‘The Thin Blue Line’ came out, I was criticized by many people for using reenactments, as if I wasn’t dedicated to the truth because I filmed these scenes. That always and still seems to be nonsensical.
Basically, great directors know how to combine music with the scenes that they are working on.
I just feel it’s important to make sure that behind the scenes is as filled with diverse voices as in front of the scene is.
The pageant movie I’m obsessed with is ‘Miss Congeniality’, hands down! I could quote everything from that movie. I love so many scenes, but I always find myself quoting the scene when Sandra Bullock goes, ‘I really do just want world peace!’
When I direct and have to look at filmed scenes of myself, I suck.
I think the motion picture industry is a stupid business and I despise acting the scenes in short snatches, one at a time. I hate this film work. I am disgusted with myself. On the stage I could never play a part unless I felt it with all my heart and soul.
Infidelity has always existed, but I feel like it was brushed under the carpet, behind the scenes. Now everyone is at it – and they’ve stopped pretending they’re not.
When on the set of a film, you have to play natural for entire scenes in a very unnatural environment. You have to express emotions and interact with other actors and also use your voice.
Before that I wanted to be a magazine illustrator – I probably would have painted Gothic scenes.
I think my role, I want to have a presence both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. So I can’t say on one particular thing, so I’ll just name them all. I’ll be the jack of all trades and hopefully decent at one of them.
Last summer a second unit production crew went to France and shot scenes for several of this season’s episodes. They shot costumed actors in and around real castles and landmarks, we couldn’t possibly have duplicated here in Hollywood.
I’d say that ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ is the most challenging movie I’ve made. It was tough to figure out how to lead this large cast into some very sensitive, intense, emotional scenes.
I don’t find intimate scenes more difficult than other scenes.
You’re always trying to find common ground with whatever you do, but you want to not be thinking about yourself when you’re performing a play. The job is getting yourself out of the way and letting the character go about the scenes.
There’s not as many passive wrestling fans as people would think. There are a lot of fans who just can’t get enough, and they’re almost more interested in what’s going on behind the scenes and the business of wrestling then they are, necessarily, of what’s going on inside of the ring.
I steal scenes, I steal opportunities. I am the ultimate thief. I got sticky fingers, man. They all call me The Thief.
There should be more love in Toronto when it comes to the music and entertainment scenes instead of keeping that Screwface Capital name. There should be more artists eating together, more artists celebrating together and more artists making music together. That’s how I feel.
I love David Fincher – even though it was just two scenes, I loved the way we worked and could tell by the way he was shooting it that this was going to be an affective movie to say the least.
Raquel Welch is someone I can also live without. We’ve got some love scenes together and I am dreading them!
‘Death Sentence’ really is a throwback to the ’70s style revenge drama with moments of action. It’s like a contemporary ‘Death Wish’ with a much more thriller style storyline, but the action scenes I shot very much in the style of ’70s films like ‘The French Connection.’
I loved fashion, I really did, but I was not obsessed with it. I wanted to be behind the scenes, like in that movie ‘Broadcast News.’ Holly Hunter – her I wanted to be.
I think football saves many people. It can give you a life of luxury, but people don’t see all the effort that goes in behind the scenes. That might mean not seeing your family or missing your mother’s birthday; many players are so focused that they miss the birth of their children.
If I can keep it light in between scenes, then that helps me dig down further than if I try and stay at that constant place all day. That’s just me. Every actor’s got their thing. But that’s what I do.
If you cannot reconcile the difference between the elite that stay behind the scene and the right of the people, that’s going to be forever chaos. It’s time to compromise, to allow more democracy. Those who are stay behind the scenes must hand off and observe the law.
The scenes in ‘The Virgin Suicides’ where Elle Fanning is ice skating are really amazing.
In big battle scenes, like ‘King Arthur’, you see the knights in all their fine armour, but they’re not in the thick of it: follow the perspective, and you’ll find some poor little sod, who didn’t want to be there, anyway, with his head split.
If you ask me whether I can direct, I can. In fact, I have shot several songs, scenes and stunts. When certain directors of my movies were not able to be there for some reason and had asked me to help out, I have directed. But to helm an entire movie is a different art altogether.
In television, you are of necessity working in bits and pieces and scenes, and things are out of order, and you never can have the same sense of how will this look when it’s all put together, what will the effect be.
I got caught up in doing records for other artists. I just stayed behind the scenes, and time just kinda passed.
Mostly, when you are shooting for action or intimate scenes, and you need to hold them, it takes away the mood if you both are not in sync. I have faced such situations and I think having a good bond with your co-stars only adds value to the scene.
Practicing going over scenes and in front of the camera just to see how that feels, and then ultimately just finding a way to expose yourself to people. That’s what I did.
You see, one of the things about being a Housewife, and a New Jersey Housewife in particular, is that most of the drama seems to happen behind the scenes when the cameras aren’t around.
I was disappointed with ‘My Friend Pinto.’ Everyone put a lot of effort into it but the final product was something no one was ready for. The story was altered and a lot of scenes were edited. I got a lot of flak for my performance.
War scenes are less difficult than love scenes.
I like flawed characters very much. A lot of times I get asked to do parts that are kind of small but key – three-scene roles that are three kick-ass scenes. Growing up, watching as many movies as I did, I was always into character actors like that.
