Eric Balfour Actors Quotations

As an actor, most of the time, you only have so much say in how, what and where things go. As a director, you really get to paint a bigger picture. You have many more brushes to use.

One of the greatest things I've learned, as an actor, was how to talk to actors.

Stepping out of the director's chair completely and into a scene as an actor was weird. It was more excitement about directing than anything, but I was on a high from being a director and enjoying that process so much that going back to being an actor was almost secondary because I really was loving directing.

I already love acting and I love actors, so being able to communicate with actors and to bring performances out of them, and to tell a story and aid them, is really exciting for me.

As an actor, I've always paid attention on sets. I've always watched, learned and listened, and you start to see things differently. You always leave yourself an out.

I've had the experience of seeing what makes life easier for an actor and for the crew, and what makes it feel bogged down and challenging. We're all really fortunate that we get to make our living as artists.

Having been an actor, I always want to leave room for the actors to find their comfort zone, so I don't like to be too rigid in how I plan my shots. It's different if you have weeks to rehearse and you can rehearse on your sets or in your locations and you can plan that out with your actors, but in modern independent filmmaking, you don't really have that time. You have to have a certain level of improvisation.

A lot of why we become actors is to fill a void that we have and a part of that void is to live out and tell stories that we've lived or that we hope would have been different in our own lives.

Nothing is worse for me, as an actor, than when I walk on a set and the director goes, "Okay, you're going to be standing here, the other person is going to be standing here, and you're going to move to there and then do the scene." That doesn't help actors.