It's pretty easy in theatre. The comedy's either physical or verbal, and you're looking at the whole frame at once. But TV executives want close-ups. I keep telling them to look at Preston Sturges' movies. He'll do a whole scene without a cut in it, and it's a riot.

Don Scardino

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I love staging action and wide-shots, not necessarily going to close-ups.

I had a big problem working with stars, because they are too expensive and have too many demands. Their names help you raise the money to make the movie, but then they demand close-ups. They change things. You end up doing things at their service instead of servicing the film.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Work Money Change

In film, the camera can get an array of shots so the audience can see the emotion the character is giving off. Using close-ups on the character's face really helps get the message across. On stage, you can't do that. But the stage has that live feeling that you can't get anywhere else because the audience is right there.

Alice Eve

Age You Where

Theater's wonderful because it's visceral, and it's happening in front of you, but you never get that close. So the close-up is a great privilege of film.

Alice Eve

Great You Wonderful

Everybody thinks performance capture is about thrashing around and doing a lots of movement, but it's actually about being able to contain and think and be believed in a close-up, as much as anything else.

Andy Serkis

Men Very Up

Actors' performances in films are enhanced in a million different ways, down to the choice of camera shot by the director - whether it's in slow motion or whether it's quick cut - or... the choice of music behind the close-up or the costume that you're wearing or the makeup.

Andy Serkis

Music You Whether

My close-up was magnificent!

Bela Lugosi

Up T Magnificent

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Charlie Chaplin

Life Age Up

There were a couple times with close-ups where I tended to overact. I would use more of my face than I needed to. I learned how to be more subtle.

Christopher Lloyd

Time Would Wit

I saw the police thriller The Blue Lamp' and remember realizing the power that Dirk Bogarde as the gangster exerted over the audience simply by his expressions in the close-ups. I could see how the people around me reacted to him and realized that I wanted to have the same effect.

Christopher Timothy

Power Wanted Want

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.

Chuck Palahniuk

Very Up Trick

I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.

David Duchovny

You Ups Up

'Play It Again Sam's opening shot is the same as 'Purple Rose's final one: a close-up of a face, rapt in a movie house. I've certainly felt that in my life. I've been known to cry watching Gene Kelly.

David Rakoff

Life Watching Watch

You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate.

Denis O'Hare

You Whenever Up

It's pretty easy in theatre. The comedy's either physical or verbal, and you're looking at the whole frame at once. But TV executives want close-ups. I keep telling them to look at Preston Sturges' movies. He'll do a whole scene without a cut in it, and it's a riot.

Don Scardino

Movies You Without

When you're shooting with long lenses, even if you're shooting a close-up, you feel the air, the distance between the camera and the subject.

Emmanuel Lubezki

You Wit Up

I don't like, and I've never been very good at, close-up shots. As soon as you have the camera right there in front of you, it feels like you're in a different reality from the person you are acting with; you lose any real connection with them.

Eve Best

Good You Wit

There is a big difference between performing in WWE before thousands of people in an arena and acting in a scene with a camera close-up on your face.

Eve Torres

Your You WWE

I found it more challenging to act in a small scene, especially if it has no dialogue and if it is a close-up with only expressions.

Fatima Sana Shaikh

Wit Up UN

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.

Finn Wittrock

Time Great God

I learned not to blink in a close-up or move your head at all, because if you did, they wouldn't use it.

Frankie Avalon

When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up.

George McGovern

Cooking for me is a way to wind down. It's different from cooking on camera, where you have to do everything twice, for a wide shot and a close-up.

Giada De Laurentiis

Planetary missions are great, but they're usually only brief snapshots of those planets and also really very close-up.

Heidi Hammel

My life had been very work-orientated, and all in close-up. Once I had the family, it went into sudden widescreen.

Helena Bonham Carter

The eyes are the windows of your soul, and when you're acting, they're one of your most important instruments. Especially for close-ups!

Jacki Weaver

If you were to hold me down and tickle me to pick my favorite 'plus-comic,' it would have to be Kevin James, a broad physical pratfaller capable of deadpan underplay, a technique honed from years of reaction-shot close-ups on TV, where every teeny fraction of a squint registers.

James Wolcott

I've got four piercings in my left, so we've dubbed my right one the 'period drama ear.' I have to be filmed from that side when I do emotional close-ups in 'Downton.'

Jessica Brown Findlay

I dreaded doing close-ups.

Jessie Matthews

I do remember that I was sitting in the make-up chair before the shoots for a commercial or film or other, and I thought: Sometime soon they are going to make a close-up of me and millions of people can see how many pimples I've got on my cheeks.

Jonathan Brandis

Tak Fujimoto and I, when we started getting enough of a budget where we could afford the right lenses - 'cause we started out doing low-budget pictures together - we started experimenting with this subjective camera thing. And we kind of fell in love with the idea of using that as our close-up.

Jonathan Demme

By the time I got to 'Silence of the Lambs,' I was madly in love with close-ups because I'm madly in love with actors, and a basic premise of 'Silence of the Lambs' is the story about two people fighting their way into each other's heads.

Jonathan Demme

I remember so vividly playing a scene with Jimmy Stewart. I was in the back of a covered wagon, and we were doing this little talk in the wilderness. They did his close-up first. I was looking at him and thinking, 'How does he do that?' He is not 'doing' anything, and yet everything is there.

Julie Adams

I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie. I'm not a fan of, okay, 'wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up - we'll figure it out in post.' I hate that.

Justin Simien

I am into nature and seeing whales. I went whale-watching, and I was really looking forward to that, but when you see it on TV and you see other programs do it, you're seeing close-ups of these massive creatures, and the music that's added gives you a certain feeling.

Karl Pilkington

In putting setting to work, I like to think about long shots and close-ups. The long shot is the overall view of the place in which the characters live - the island, the town, the wide sweep of place. Then we narrow in. The close-up, the tight focus, makes the place different from anywhere else.

Kaui Hart Hemmings

In professional wrestling, I think that they want you to be bigger than life. It's almost like an over-acting type thing - whereas on the big screen, you're 35 feet and they've got a close-up of you to put it on the screen in the movie house. At 35 feet, it's more subtlety than the overboard drama that we do in pro wrestling.

Kevin Nash

Working in film tends to isolate actors - it's your close-up; it's all about you.

Kevin Spacey

Raft told me how to walk with him in a scene: We'd start off in a long shot normal, and about the time we got together in a close-up, I'd be bending my knees so I'd be shorter.

Marie Windsor

I like the way Quentin Tarantino creates a scene using a series of close-ups or showing very cool images of a person or people walking on some ordinary street in slow motion. I wish I could achieve that kind of slow-motion effect in manga, but it's rather difficult to draw; the only things we can play with are tones of black and white.

Masashi Kishimoto

I watch my wife knitting, and it's like watching close-up magic to me.

Michael McKean

The nude scenes were a little eerie and I felt a bit odd. Yeah, when the camera scanned up my body, I said to my friend, 'Now, that's a close-up.' I mean, you see every inch of my body. But I'm okay with it and so it was cool.

Natasha Henstridge

High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I'd heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script.

Neill Blomkamp

Sometimes you will do a close-up for a scene in the morning where you are totally distraught, then shoot the rest of that scene seven hours later. How do you hang on to that feeling all day without burning up, without going so far that you have nothing left to give when the cameras roll again?

Penelope Cruz

Rod's always opening doors for me, but I usually tell him to walk through first. Otherwise, if we're at a restaurant and I'm in front, the paparazzi end up getting a big giant close-up of me, and then he's trailing behind, looking like my little child!

Penny Lancaster

I shot a lot of close-ups on this movie 'cause there's like a dual mystery, she's searching through her haunted past to find some truth and she's also following an external mystery where she comes to think she might be the killer.

Philip Kaufman

The power of a close-up can be extraordinary, but you have to have actors who are able to reveal themselves.

Phyllida Lloyd

If it was up to me, we would eliminate close-ups and beautiful light and sound - because we want to go back to basics.

Pilou Asbaek

I have always said that the biggest difference between stage and cinema is that one has got close-ups.

Prithviraj Sukumaran

Every shot is unique, even if it's just a close-up, an insert of your hand. You've got to work with the guy behind the lens to get it right, focus in. Those are critical little nothing things, but you've got to work with the people who are trying to put it down, in order to get it.

Robert Forster