Woody Allen Actors Quotations

I don't like to meet the actor and have a lot of conferences and talk about their sub-life and their off-screen life and their back stories and all that nonsense, because it never means anything.

As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.

It's all through the actors; I cannot write in that idiom

I can do a limited amount of things and that's what I do and I feel comfortable doing it and I have no particular desire to do anything else as an actor.

I don't like theatrical actors and actresses. I like people that talk like real human beings.

For some reason it gives people pleasure to equate the life of certain movie actors or actresses with their actual lives.

I don't like to reminisce much, and my walls don't have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff. I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.

The less I speak to the actors, the better. And I always hire great people, and I don't want to impose my pre-conceived notions on them. They know how to play it.

I have great faith in the actors. When they improvise, it always sounds better than the stuff I write in my bedroom. When they improvise, they make it sound alive.

I've always had an easy time directing actors because I always hire ones that are great before I get my hands on them.

Sometimes some of the best moments are contributed by the actors being creative, with their own improvisations.

If the [actors] are working, and I have a dinner engagement, I don't do 20 takes. I do five takes and go home. I want to go to dinner.