Top 25 Laurie Metcalf Quotes

I don’t like working in front of a camera.

I work just as hard and have just as much fun whether in a 50-seat house or in a 1000-seat house. It’s a luxury to be in a tiny space every once in a while and a rush to be on a giant stage every once in a while.

When I go to see something I’m in, or my friends are in, it’s like a home movie. When I just go to the movies and don’t know anyone in it, then it’s a real movie.

I’m hideously shy as myself, but on stage I can run around naked and bite the heads off fish.

No matter how many times you‘ve done it, the early stages of getting a show up on its feet is very hit and miss. There seem to be thousands of options on every page to discover.

That was the beauty of ‘Roseanne’ and Roseanne herself. It could go dark; it could do issues.

I was an office secretary for a long time. A good secretary.

I gravitated back to theatre again, and when I heard about this little independent movie called ‘Lady Bird,’ I thought, ‘This will be a project where I can dip my toe back into the water.’

I watch the Oscars in my pajamas like everybody else.

I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school – ‘Auntie Mame.’ I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn’t shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.

I don’t like the camera. I get very self-conscious with it and then spend way too much time not looking self-conscious instead of being free, as I do on stage, to do my work.

I don’t know if ISU helped me become what I am, but I know that if I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t be what I am today.

Really, I’ll go anywhere at any time to continue working in theater – it’s a passion that I’m thankful I still have. It keeps me creative and on my toes and meeting great people. I can’t imagine a better way of working than on a play.

I am a kind of competitive person. I am competitive with myself. I won‘t let anything go until I am satisfied with how it is.

I can’t even call it work. I’m a creative-a-holic. I love the tearing into new material.

I wasn’t turning down film roles, let’s put it that way. I was never really on that radar.

One of the hardest things about directing is just to be patient and remind yourself that you’ve been in Week 1 of a rehearsal process yourself, and you know what it feels like.

I had accidentally gotten a laugh on a line in a play I was in during high school. I got hooked, but I had no idea I would ever be able to support myself by acting. I knew no one in the business. I was from the Midwest. No one within a radius of a thousand miles was doing anything like that.

A dream job is to walk right past hair and makeup.

I’m not trying to blow out a camera lens or make the audience‘s hair go straight back from my sheer volume, sheer energy level.

I was always a secretary in the early days, before we decided we were brave enough to join Equity and see if this thing has any legs.

I want to be thinking as quickly as I need to as soon as I hit the stage. I want to have a vocal warm-up.

I’m happy whenever I’m in a rehearsal room. I’ve always gotten all my energy and creativity in there.

I’ve loved every minute of every hour I’ve spent doing theatre.

When one thing ends, you put it away and start from scratch on the next thing.