German - Director | November 6, 1931 - November 19, 2014
All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.
Mike Nichols
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Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried.
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If you're fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and you're a Jew, you don't think so much about relationships. People didn't have a lot of divorces during the Holocaust, for instance.
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I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine.
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It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me.
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I believed early and still believe that everybody who can act can do it already, just they don't know how and don't want to talk about it.
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I never understand when people say, 'Do you do comedy or tragedy?' I don't think they're very much different. They both have to be true, and there isn't a great play in the world that doesn't have funny parts to it - as 'Salesman' does, as 'King Lear' does. The whole idea is to reflect life in some way, which means surely you have to have both.
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You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.
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I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define.
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I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
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In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was.
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If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years. I still do sometimes.
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