Film Directors From The United States

"There are so many forms of puppets. The ones on 'Sesame Street' are probably the most simple that we do."

"I've never felt any sense of competition with anybody, and we're all friends. We're all good friends."

"I do remember doing shows strictly in black and white, too."

"If any-thing, there's a difference in working with color in England and the color in the U.S."

"I was very interested in theatre—mostly in stage design but I did a little bit of acting."

"I wanted to do a film where the creatures didn't look like us."

"It's a rather dark vision, actually."

"People shouldn't come expecting to see the Muppets because they are not here. This is something else."

"It has always been difficult to get Big Bird to be very pretty. Big Bird in England is much more gorgeous."

"Frankly, I'm a lot more comfortable if I'm wearing a puppet."

"I couldn't do ventriloquism. I don't have any interest in splitting myself in two, the way a ventriloquist does — half-himself, half the dummy on his knee."

"It's an adventure story. But it's definitely not in our world."

"I think it's good to be your own person. But individuality is a mixed blessing. People who are 'different' are isolated."

"There's not much to the Kermit puppet—it's practically a sock. But when it was on Jim's hand, there was another creature in the room."

"I've always thought that science fiction films set in our world have always rung false."

"The whole idea with the show from the start was to go international."

"I suppose that he's an alter ego. But he's a little snarkier than I am - slightly wise. Kermit says things I hold myself back from saying."

"As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood."

"There must be a lot of shy actor in puppeteering. His work is the puppeteer's statement. It's his outlet. If I had to face the audience myself, as Jim Henson, I'm sure I'd be just a bit shy. But when it's your puppets that face the audience, it's different. That I can do very easily."

"Jim giggled when he laughed. His sense of humor could be sly and wicked."

"Personally, I prefer working in the background."

"The people who worked for Jim felt like family and he treated them like family."

"I find that I have great faith in human nature. I believe that people are good. I believe they are to be trusted. So far as I know, no one has ever betrayed my faith, in any way. If they ever have, I've been spared the knowledge of it. If I couldn't have faith in human nature, I wouldn't want to live. It is the one thing that could destroy for me the joy of living. I've come to believe that life, under almost any conditions, is worth while. I found that out when I had my accident some years ago, and was in the hospital. I thought, for a couple of weeks, that I would be blind for life. I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive. I still think so."

"I used old comic clothes stuff in the early days. I had the big shoes, I had the tight clothes, in fact I played several different characters. I played one called Willie Work; he used to have wide shoulders, a little cat mustache, a high hat. Another one was called Lonesome Luke, and his clothes were tight with a little funny hat; he had a funny little mustache. But when I adopted the glasses, it more or less put me in a different category because I became a human being. He was a kid that you would meet next door, across the street, but at the same time I could still do all the crazy things that we did before, but you believed them. They were natural and the romance could be believable."

"My humor was never cruel or cynical. I just took life and poked fun at it. We made it so it could be understood the world over, without language barriers. We seem to have conquered the time barrier, too."

"I love competition. I'd rather have to fight and worry than be peaceful and secure, any day. I've found that I'm a peaceful, easy-going sort of a fellow about all the small things in life. But when a big issue comes along and when I feel I'm right about it—well, I guess I'm pretty stubborn. Even nasty. I've taken up golf. I'm crazy about it. Doug Fairbanks and I play every day that we can get away from work. I not only like the game a lot, but I want to master it. I'm not satisfied just to play golf. I want to be good at it. That's the way I've come to feel about everything."

"Love is the closest thing to laughter and the closest thing to tears. Love is the motive power of everything in the universe that has beauty in it. Love is the reason for everything and the reward for everything. It’s always seemed strange to me that we have to use the word love for so many things. And yet when you come to think of it, that’s all right, too, because love is in everything in some form or another. Without it, I imagine the flowers would stop blooming and the sun would stop shining and people would stop laughing, and even the rain wouldn’t fall. So love is always growth. I think if I could have just one word for love—it would be understanding. Love must always be unselfish, and strangely enough, love is the only thing in the world that ever is unselfish. And if it isn’t unselfish, it’s only a counterfeit of love."

"I find that I would like now, best of all, to be a good conversationalist. I know I'm not one at present. Oh, I can sit and talk a little of this and that, but I realize that I haven't any definite or profound knowledge. I won't be satisfied with just a patter, a surface glaze of information. I don't want short-cuts to learning. I want to know all about the thing I study. I'd like to be able to hold my own, to meet on a common ground, with scientists, inventors, clerics, doctors, athletes, authors. The most worthwhile thing in life is to store your mind with knowledge. I wish now that I had been able to go to college, if only so that I might have had appreciations earlier in the game. People often say to me now that I have my home, my career, fame (if you call it that), there must be nothing left for me to live for. But there is everything left to live for. All the things I don't know about, all the things I want to know about. Pictures, I've discovered, were practically all I did know about up to very recently. I've had to work so hard, to concentrate so closely, that I never have had time to read or to travel or to think about other things. I'm just at the beginning of living..."

"Becoming Meggie Cleary was Rachel Ward's most arduous undertaking. She botched her first reading, distracted by the prospect of another film offer, and the producers let her agent know there wouldn't be a second reading. Suddenly, it mattered. "Say anything, say I was ill, see if they'll have me back," she instructed her agent. Ward then signed on with drama coach Sondra Seacat,⁅sic⁆ whose clients include Jessica Lange and Mickey Rourke of "Diner." ("Maybe I should keep quiet about it," Ward giggles. "Maybe I'm not going to do Sondra's reputation any good.") But after five intensive days of study she did a screen test and got the part. [...] Before Seacat's tutelage, Ward thinks, her acting was largely "jumping in, crossing my fingers and hoping it would go all right." Now, though, she has a technique that is "very Method" and "working from the inside out" and "learning about my instrument." She's sure that her professional evolution is there on the screen for all to see, which both gratifies and mortifies."I hate everything in the first show; I hope people don't judge my performance by it."✱"

"The cast is a staggering one – Elaine herself, likewise Jeannie, as well as Peter Falk, Melanie Griffith, Marlo Thomas, Olympia Dukakis and Louise Lasser. The director was an interesting choice: Sandra Seacat, acting coach and guru to many stars."

"They are mostly excellent; a few are better than that; one young man named Romeo Mizzaro and one young lady named Sandra Kaufman ✱ must certainly be destined to bring many future stages alive with searching subtleties (his) and appetizing warmth (Miss Kaufman's)."

"I only wish Lee could have lived to see me portray a schizophrenic in Nobody's Child. I never could have gotten near playing that kind of part without Lee's exercises, and the subsequent work I did and continue to do with his primary disciple, the brilliant Sandra Seacat.”"

"As a friend who abandons when she falls on hard times and then justifies it as honesty, she caught the smooth, unconflicted heartlessness of an entire class."

"She's extraordinary. She made me work in a totally different way than I'd ever worked before. For the first time, I really worked on technique... It was definitely not an easy five months. It was a lot of tying things together and understanding and confusion and frustration and anger. I asked a lot of questions about acting and about me and stuff, and Sandra just had these answers, and they were just like, of course, oh my God, of course!"

"Two of my teachers, John Lehne and Sandra Seacat, who both studied with Lee Strasberg, emphasized a wonderful relaxation technique in their classes. While we were doing a scene, they had us consciously think, "Are my shoulders up?" or "Is my anus tight?" or "Am I holding tension in my hip?" Just the question would allow my shoulders to go down, my arms to relax, or my hip to release. John was Jill Clayburgh's teacher, and Sandra taught Jessica Lange, Mickey Rourke, and Treat Williams. Watch these actors' movies and see how relaxed they are."

"Ward's first reading before producers David Wolper and Stan Margulies was disastrous. So she hired drama coach Sondra Seacat,⁅sic⁆ who also helped turn Jessica Lange from King Kong's consort into the soulful actress of Frances and Tootsie. According to Margulies, Ward's second reading "was so breathtaking that she got the part right there."✱"

"One afternoon, after staring at the name Sandra Seacat for ten minutes, I picked up the phone. My voice was so timid, she must have thought I was half dead. I stuttered and stammered when I introduced myself and told her Peter Falk had recommended I call. She calmly said, "Why don't you come over and we'll meet?" "Okay," I said, as I flipped through my empty appointment book for a day in the far-off future. That way I could eventually cancel. "When would be good for you?" I asked. "Right now," she said. "Come right now." For some unknown reason, it felt like I was being drawn to the light of a flame. As I entered Sandra's apartment, I spotted something that would soon transform my life. It was a large photograph propped on a chair. I said a quick hello to Sandra but couldn't keep my eyes off the picture. "Who is that?" I asked. "That's my spiritual teacher, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.""

"She was my first teacher and acting coach. I worked with her from the time I was 13 to the time I was 22. She has deep intuition and there is no teacher that can touch her. If you wonder how to do the work in a way that doesn't harm you, but actually evolves your being? Sandra Seacat. She is a mystic with technical prowess and you feel safe with her from the start. She does not publicize, she does not reveal who she works with, you can't find her easily and she is not cheap. But if you find her and work with her, you will come closer to your potential than you ever have in your life. I choose my words carefully and the above is not hyperbole, it is actual and true."

"There is no higher level acting coach out there. She involves the heart, the intelligence, and the Spirit. She has deep intuition; she is a creator and a summoner. She has great power. I worked with her from the time I was 13 to the time I was 22. Sandra Seacat presents a way to do the work in a way that doesn't harm you, but actually evolves your being.... She is a mystic with technical prowess and you feel safe with her from the start. She does not publicize, she does not reveal who she works with, you can't find her easily and she is not cheap. But if you find her and work with her...you will come closer to your potential than you ever have in your life."

"When Bob and Jack cast me in Postman. They wanted–Bobby suggested it, and of course I resisted, and it took me a long time to kind of give in to working with her. But then once I did it was wonderful. 'Cause I am the kind of person that needs a teacher once in a while."

"I had a wonderful acting teacher, Sandra Seacat, and one of the things she taught was she'd put a book on a chair and all you did was ask questions about that book: is it a good book or a lousy book? Who made the binding? Why don't I want to read it? Why would I want to read it? How long has it been sitting there? It's a very simple exercise but I do that all the time, constantly question myself and my surroundings, not in a negative way but in a positive way that leads toward my character."

"She really changed things around for me. She got me at the moment where it was all beginning to come alive, and it was a great catalyst for me."

"She was out of the Actors Studio, but then she really diverged from Method acting. She did a lot with Siddha yoga. You know, she was a follower of Guru Baba Muktananda. I never became a follower of his, but Sandra brought a lot of that stuff into her early work with me, relaxation and meditation."

"Sandra believes that every part you play is really part of you, a way for you to work out something in your past, something in your present. Since then, whenever I've chosen to do something, I've thought, "well, this has nothing to do with me." Then, sure enough, once I get into it and really start doing the work, and really start uncovering, I see that it's absolutely about something that's going on in my life. It isn't something obvious. It's usually pretty hidden. But there's always some sort of parallel to what's going on in my own life. And so, perhaps you can use it to bring closure, as a healing, a reconnection. I believe in that. I believe in that."

"In 1987, when I was 19, I was studying musical theater at Boston’s Emerson College. My sister, Tricia Leigh, told me about a summer acting retreat in Italy. Mom paid, so off we went. For six weeks, we lived in a villa and worked with acting coach Sandra Seacat. Her method included a deep, intense excavation of self that was designed to free yourself emotionally. It also allowed you to apply the technique when creating a character. We worked from morning to night, and I felt on the precipice of my life. One of Sandra’s exercises included a ritual to help us understand who we were. For me, I had to find my own identity, separate from my parents. Then I was expected to share my discoveries with the class as a performance."

"Yeah, I do. I’ve worked with a couple of people that are actually mother and daughter. Sandra Seacat is the name of the mother, and Greta Seacat is the name of the daughter, and they’re both witches. They’re both just these genius witches."

"It is impossible to express who Sandra Seacat is and was and will forever be. She is a true legend in the sense that she lived the most virtuous life one can imagine. A life devoted to profound service and healing through art. She was a revolutionary, a culture-changing teacher of acting and storytelling. She is a beacon for all of us of what a life of deep meaning and beauty can look like. And she was irreverent and forever playing like a joyful, unbridled child. I feel grateful beyond words to be able to call her my teacher, my acting partner in Under the Banner of Heaven, my mentor and my friend.”"

"There was a woman named Sandra Seacat and she was very much a mentor in connecting up your spirit or soul with the part of acting you are going to have strength in, so then you have the strength to believe in yourself."

"Ward's inexperience was noticeable, especially to her. She had taken acting lessons before, but she believed she needed help —fast—and wound up getting it from a talented acting coach named Sandra Seacat. Seacat saved her, and in the end, Ward saved herself. You can almost see her develop as an actress in "Thorn Birds." The segments are shot pretty much in sequence, and at the start, she's cold, withdrawn, awkward. By the finish, her Maggie is much stronger, more worldly, compassionate. The changes were in character, but they were taking place in Ward too. Thanks, in large part, to Seacat.✱"

"Somehow, having to spend so much time with each word, because the words were sung instead of spoken, made me freeze as an actress. I went to my acting teacher at the time, the brilliant Sandra Seacat. She somehow intuited to tell me simply to imagine I was at the ocean. Sensorily, of course. I worked at seeing the ocean, smelling the ocean, until I was breathing with the ocean, and I practically was the ocean. I could hardly believe the sounds that came out of my mouth. They were rich, full, and very loud. It hardly sounded like my voice. But it was."