“Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director’s task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over.”

Only the gentle are ever really strong.

An actual right is something that governments need merely to secure, not to implement.

You are who you are meant to be, Dance as if no one’s watching, Love as if it’s all you know, Dream as if you’ll live forever, Live as if you’ll die today

And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.

You’re tearing me apart!

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.

What do we need all that for?”If a picture is psychologically motivated, if there is truth in the relationship in it, then I think that picture will do good.

Nowadays, he lives in a world we don’t understand too well, the actor’s world. We don’t see too much of him. But he’s a good boy, my Jim.

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.

Being a senior in high school means you’re not only getting closer to adulthood, but also ready to start thinking about your dreams and aspirations, whether that’s applying for college, joining the military, or seeing the world.

If I had one day when I didn’t have to be all confused and didn’t have to feel that I was ashamed of everything. If I felt that I belonged someplace. You know?

Take it easy driving– the life you save may be mine.

There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning.

He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art.

My parents said, Oh, he’s going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.

I have only one rule in acting – trust the director and give him heart and soul.

Oh, what the hell did I know? I went to the set the first day in full makeup and the director told me to take it off. So I did the film without makeup. I had nothing to do with anything I did. I never understood why I was so famous.

It’s scary being in a room with producers and saying, ‘Here’s my idea,’ when I’m scared to get shot down.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.

Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can’t leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.