Arthur Penn Quotations

I think there's a quality of passion to the American actor. I'm certainly attracted to it, and I like to hope that underscoring it is a characteristic of my work. That quality is certainly also present in some British actors, but I tend to feel the mechanical and intellectual process is dominant in the British.

One has a sort of spiritual obligation to go back to the source material of the literature, to make contact with one of the seminal plays of the modern theater.

Good actors go to emotional places where nobody else wants to go.

Tap into what you don't want to say. Tap into that secret place, despite the agony, despite the personal pain, over and above the fatigue.

I don't storyboard. I guess it dates back to my days in live television, where there was no possibility of storyboarding and everything was shot right on the spot - on the air, as we say - at the moment we were transmitting. I prefer to be open to what the actors do, how they interact to the given situation.

A lot of directors in television have come up through the technical ranks. They have all the technical skills in the world. They're not all that familiar with actors.

I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.

I believe, and this is perhaps too nationalistic a view, that the American style of acting puts actors quickly in touch with each other, so that their continuous presence in a company, as in England, is not absolutely necessary.