Eric Balfour Quotes

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.

At a certain level, great actors who are successful actors don't have to worry about it. They can just go for it because they believe in themselves.

As you get older and you hopefully battle your own demons, you find other reasons why you want to be an actor. The people that I truly admire do this because they love telling stories and they love the make-believe of the moment and not so much the gratification afterwards.

The stories that I like to tell and the movies I like are always grounded in the emotional arc of the characters.

As a director, you want to be really connected to every part of your set, from your actors all the way to your camera operators. Everybody is a part of the creative process, and if they feel like they're part of a team versus just being a tool, they're going to give you something special.

To whatever degree you have as a celebrity or notoriety, there are people who see you as an opinion leader.

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.

I'd love to say that every move I make is completely calculated and I'm sitting on a pile of scripts, sifting through them for the perfect role, but the fact is that there are a lot of talented people out there and there's a lot of competition in our business.

I'm not a trained chef, so I end up making stuff up. It either turns out brilliant or an absolute disaster. I just go for it.

Directing is something that I'd been wanting and hoping to do, as I've grown into myself.

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 believe in my own abilities and my future enough that I will not take a job that could hurt the integrity of my long-term career.

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.

The beauty of every experience you have is that hopefully you'll learn something from it.

My family is Native American, and I was raised with Native American ceremonies.

By nature, I'm very care-taking. There's something really beautiful about cooking for someone and feeding them.

Every little opportunity and chance that I get to be on a set, to be a director, to utilize the skill sets that I already have and to learn what I don't know, and to see how I can improve upon that is just a really great opportunity for me.

The amazing thing about technology is that people have power. We are seeing it all the time in that innocuous people you would never know are having their voices heard because of this ability and technology we have.

I'm such an L.A. boy, I love hanging out by the beach and throwing some steaks on the grill.

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.

I think 'Game Of Thrones' has been genius, and I really don't want it to end. Every episode is huge. It's totally immense, and the actors are all fantastic in it. It has totally drawn me in.

I actually like acting in things that I'm directing because I'm able to control the tone of how a scene may go and I know, very clearly, what I want from myself in that scene and what I need, as far as from a directorial standpoint.

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 think directors can be a little insensitive to how vulnerable an actor is, when he's giving a performance. Part of the job of an actor is to invite scrutiny, but with that, the people around them have to nurture that and put them in an environment where they feel safe and they feel like they can risk something.