"Make sure the fewest amount of people are on set that day, then celebrate what you've got." - Gretchen Mol, in British Esquire, on filming nude scenes
Gretchen has made a common error in diction: she has used "amount" in place of "number." The word "amount" is used to refer to uncountable nouns; people are countable, so the noun that precedes the prepositional phrase "of people" should be "number." Once this noun switch is made, Gretchen's choice of adjective would be correct because "fewest" is used to modify countable nouns. While the phrase "fewest number of people" may be grammatically correct, it is more common to use the superlative adjective "smallest" to modify the noun "number."
These versions of Gretchen's statement correct the error in diction:
"Make sure the fewest people are on set that day, then celebrate what you've got."
"Make sure the smallest number of people are on set that day, then celebrate what you've got."
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