Art & Creativity Quote by Ray Walston

"But I would like to think that it's the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor"

Ray Walston, Actor

About this Quote

Walston is doing a small act of insurgency: he’s yanking authorship back onto the set floor and planting a flag in the one job people love to call “interpretive.” The phrasing is pointedly repetitive - “not the director, not the guy… not the guy…” - a drumbeat that sounds like humility but lands as a quiet power grab. By reducing everyone else to “the guy,” he strips the prestige titles of their aura. The actor, in his framing, isn’t the last link in the chain; he’s the hinge the whole chain swings on.

The intent isn’t to deny collaboration so much as to correct a cultural accounting system that routinely credits the visible authority (director) or the sacred text (book) while treating performance as decoration. Walston’s career arc matters here: a working actor who moved between stage, film, and television, he lived inside an industry where directors and writers are lionized and actors are both overexposed and undervalued - adored as celebrities, dismissed as replaceable labor. The quote pushes back on that contradiction.

Subtext: he’s talking about risk. An adaptation can be elegant on paper, a director can be brilliant in theory, but the actor is the one who has to make an audience believe in real time, under the unforgiving pressure of the close-up. It’s also a defense of craft over credit: the actor “makes the difference” because that’s where meaning becomes human, messy, and specific. In a medium obsessed with auteur mythology, Walston argues for the performer as the actual point of contact between art and audience.

Quote Details

Topic	Movie
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by Ray Add to List

About the Author

Ray Walston (December 2, 1914 - January 1, 2001) was a Actor from USA.

14 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is"

Taylor Hackford, Director

"Sometimes the producer has more say and the director takes what he is given. On other occasions, you don't see the producer very much and the director is the one who it is all about"

Julie Harris, Actress

"The only other things, and again, these things are hearsay, is that he could be pretty rough on directors, because he knew exactly the way he wanted to play the part. And he did so"

Tommy Bond, Actor

"The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie"

John Frankenheimer, Director

"No two directors make the same film the same way"

Rob Cohen

"It's natural for any actor that segues into directing to be an actor's director. You know how to relate to the actors"

Omar Epps, Actor

"The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director's somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It's like conducting an orchestra"

Roland Joffe, Director

"What I think happens, and that you have to acknowledge though, is that a director uses a book as a launching pad for his own work and that's always very flattering"

Katherine Dunn, Novelist

"A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should"

Frank Darabont, Director

"My guess is that if they now choose to change of director for every other film, it's just because you can't really change the formula, you can merely try to film it your way"

Guy Hamilton, Director

"You have to nail the right tone because sometimes when you just see his films cold, you're not quite sure. It's the same in - I'm trying to think of other directors with a similar sense - David Lynch's films, Tim's films, some of Cronenberg's stuff"

Danny Elfman, Musician

"I had read the novel and I had heard David Lean was going to direct it - and it came as a surprise to me because American actors, if given the chance, can do style as well as anybody and speak as well as anybody"

Rod Steiger, Actor

"A film is a director's vision... There is, however, much input an actor or actress can have"

Natasha Richardson, Actress

"The director is the only person who knows what the film is about"

Satyajit Ray, Director

"Indeed, the actor's lot is a much harder one than that of the director's, from one simple standpoint: The actor has to play the eight shows a week"

Charles Keating, Lawyer

"Every director is so different from every other one"

Peter Fonda, Actor

"I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game"

Bob Balaban, Actor

"I think you've got to talk to the director, see the director's films and recognise that it's important that the work fits right in and see if as part of the movie"

Dennis Muren, Artist

"Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer"

Spike Lee, Director

"Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable"

Jessica Lange, Actress

Jessica Lange