He’s also very good at giving technical notes. Not a lot of directors know how to do that. He’ll say don’t blink there or don’t raise your eyebrow. That kind of technical stuff. The first night I shot with James, we were shooting a scene and, and he was giving the other actor a lot of technical notes, and they were responding. And I would watch their performance get better and better in front of my eyes. I’m like, I’m going to do everything this guy tells me to do.
Greta is very smart. She’s very soft-spoken. The set is very warm. It’s generous. You feel like it’s just conducive to doing good work. You feel like you can fail. Both she and James, though, are both equally demanding. They both demand excellence from the people they’re working with. They just have different ways of achieving that. I think they’re both great film artists. I would absolutely go into battle for either of those filmmakers.
That’s awesome. One final question. Is there a secret to the sauce in creating a memorable character?
Yeah. The secret of the sauce is the script. You’re only gonna be as good as the screenplay. And the only thing I know to do as an actor, the only way I know to choose material I make is based on the quality of the script. There are probably other ways to determine the roles that you’re going to do. I mean, look, I’m fortunate that I have a choice when you’re a struggling actor. I spent a lot of my life as a struggling actor, you’ll do whatever they ask you to do, and you don’t have any choice about material. I’m very fortunate now that I have an opportunity to be able to choose better things regardless of what you’re doing.
Photo Credit: Marion Curtis / StarPix for Columbia Pictures; © 2019 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“The secret to the sauce is just listening—listening as an actor, listening in, seeing if you can learn to listen.”
The next secret to the sauce is just listening—listening as an actor, listening in, seeing if you can learn to listen. You will be a success as an actor. I mean, whether or not that means you will be a successful actor is another matter. But, but you will succeed in the scene you’re doing if you can learn to listen to your scene partner. The more I do this, the more I’m convinced that what acting is all about is just listening.
What advice would you give to the person who is taking roles because they need the experience? They want to be on that set, and they want to build up their resume,
Make your own work. You can’t sit around and wait for the phone to ring with the job. You’ll wait a long time. Whether that means you have to learn to write a script or you have to read a book, and you say, “Oh, this would make a good movie. I’m going to make this into a film.” Or you’re going to get your iPhone, and you’re going to make an improvisational short, whatever it means. You’ve got to make your own work. You know, if you’re a musician, uh, you can just go down to the subway and play a song. You can practice at home. If you’re an actor, you need a medium, and so you have to make the medium. You can’t wait for people to call you. They don’t call; they don’t call cause you gotta make your own work.
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