When I cast great actors, I try to make extraordinary people ordinary, dealing with these extremely small intimate details of interpersonal relationships against an epic backdrop.
— Derek Cianfrance
I ask all my actors to do two things: I ask them to fail for me, and I ask them to surprise me.
I love people that work with passion and love. When you make choices that way, there's reverberations, consequences. That's what I'm interested in, that echo, that ripple of choice.
After 'Place Beyond the Pines,' honestly, I was sick of myself. Sick of my own ideas. I wanted to do an adaptation, but everything I'd been reading, I just didn't understand it.
There's this thing in Hollywood about the sympathetic character and likability. I've never understood that because the people I love most in my life are not likable all the time. My wife is not always likable. I'm certainly not always likable. My dad is not always likable. We're human beings.
