Sidney Lumet on Faye Dunaway: This Hunger For Detail

Sidney Lumet and Faye Dunaway between takes on the set of Network/New York City/1975/

Interview with Sidney Lumet

Conducted by James Grissom

NYC

1991

An intelligent actor feeds on detail, and this desire, this hunger, for detail is often characterized--incorrectly--as difficult behavior; a caricature of a Method actor; as the caprices of an out-of-control ego. However, this is simply a good worker asking for his--or her--tools to get the job at hand done. Faye [Dunaway] needs and demands detail, and because she is intelligent and extraordinarily discerning, she requires a great deal of it, and if you do at least half of the research she does, you get amazing results from your homework. I think she's worked with a number of people who don't work as hard or who don't want to delve as deeply as she does, and this is a penance no actor deserves. But it is terribly common.

© 2014 James Grissom