William H. Macy
William H. Macy
William Hall Macy, Jr.is an American actor, screenwriter, teacher and theater director. His film career has been built mostly on his appearances in small, independent films, though he also appeared in summer action films. Macy has described himself as "sort of a Middle American, WASPy, Lutheran kind of guy... Everyman"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth13 March 1950
CityMiami, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I love directors who talk action as opposed to emotion.
Another mistake a director can make is not to be prepared, so you get there on the day to shoot the scene, and they don't know how it should be blocked, and they're not clear on how they want to do a scene.
Making a mistake means overshooting a scene, shooting too many takes, for instance. Long after you've got it, you just keep shooting.
When a director makes a mistake, people suffer. People suffer horribly sometimes.
I love making movies, I love the differentness of it, I love writing. But I've always liked television. I grew up on television.
Directing is a huge amount of work with very little payoff, and a quarter of the money, and nine times more time spent.
Emotions are the natural result of striving for something. Every single scene has two or more people in it, and nobody wants the same thing, so they are negotiating this one way or another. The result of that negotiation will bring out all kinds of emotional stuff in you.
That's pretty much what every scene is about, getting people to see your point of view. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
If I had my choice, I would do the same little independent films, but they would have $100 million budgets, so I could get paid a fortune and hang out in a huge trailer.
All that back-story stuff doesn't help. What you get paid for is to stand toe-to-toe with the other actor and get him to do your will.
At the end of the day, what actors really want to do is act a lot and not wait around in the trailer.
The best thing for an actor to do is take your attention off of how you feel about it, and put it on striving to obtain a particular objective. The happy result is that it brings out all this unexpected stuff in yourself.
Actors are embracing a new aesthetic, which is leaning more toward truthful and simple and direct, as opposed to what we would normally call sitcom acting.
One of the things I did early on in film was over-enunciate and talk too loud.