chadhartigan:

“But I tell you, even in shooting sometimes you say, ‘Hey, that’s too much. Cool it down a little because you’re emoting all over the place. Let’s do it much softer.’ Most of my directions are really less. ‘Less, please, less.’ Or when I want a guy to get mad, like Harvey Keitel, smashing through the window, I didn’t have to tell him anything. Nothing. Harvey did that. He knows. He was feeling that. I didn’t have to tell him anything. There was one thing I wanted to say about that- well, I forgot what I was going to say but really, there’s no magic. It’s just getting to know the other person.”

- Martin Scorsese on directing actors in a 1975 interview