You work with every actor differently. It's like if you're a mother, if you have children, some children need more discipline. Other children you back off of a little bit and let them be. It's the same way with actors. Some actors need a lot of hand holding. Other actors like to be let be and you let them go. Some actors like to be nudged just a little bit. Some actors don't mind line readings.
In America they have to know just what you are-- novelist, poet, playwright. . . Well, I've been all of them. . . I think poems and novels and stories spring from the same seed. It's not like, say, playing polo and knitting.