Here we have the best Theatre Quotes from famous authors such as Seth Numrich, Michelle Ryan, Kelly Brook, Tim Crouch, Brian Blessed. Find the perfect quotation from our collection.
I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker‘s assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
I have done film, television and theatre – all at a pretty substantial level – I don’t think it’s possible for American actors to do that.
My main ambitions, really, are in the theatre.
I’m just attracted to good material and great characters and that can come in any form, whether it’s television or film or a theatre piece.
My plan is to have a theatre in some small town or something and I’ll be manager. Ill be the crazy old movie guy.
When the audience comes out of the theatre, they should remember your role and appreciate you for it. They should not forget you.
My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton’s story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.
I was very excited and interested as a background dancer or as a theatre actor or when I was working on TV, or even on the film which didn’t do well, like ‘Byomkesh.’
I did theatre a lot when I was a kid. Then I went to acting school in New York. I did a lot of behind the scenes in college. I wanted to learn while I had the time. I studied theatre and film in different capacities.
I love live theatre, it’s always thrilling and exciting.
Theatre is really difficult, so it’s important that you have a director that kind of understands that and is really hands on.
Judi Dench and Ian McKellen taught me how to work hard and respect the theatre.
I was never the class clown or anything like that. When I was growing up and doing theatre in Seattle I was always doing very dramatic work. Now I can’t get a dramatic role to save my life!
All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I’m very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.
I arrive at the theatre four hours before the beginning of the performance. I must get accustomed to the hall even if I know it well.
The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.
Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.
Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as ‘Godspell’ – I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did ‘Elm Street‘ – I’d probably be on a psychiatrist‘s couch saying: ‘Freddy ruined me.’ But I’d already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre.
Poetry is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV.
I think the most important thing that comes out of the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in early 1942 is a commitment on Roosevelt’s part to fight Europe first. To struggle first against Germany and put Japan and the Pacific as a secondary theatre in the conflict. And this is what Churchill was after.
Inside I never said I wanted to do theatre or be an actor.
I always go back to theatre. It’s probably where I’ll draw my last breath.
There are a lot of pros to doing a film, as far as it helping your film career, and it is completely different financially. But theatre is the only place where you get to actually be the character, and nobody is going to come around and change it later.
The 10 years of theatre prepared me not only as an actor but also as a human being. It gave me the habit of reading, watching, and preserving.
Where every moment is about truth and I think it’s a great challenge every night. That’s what really drove me to wanting to do theatre, and it’s great.
As much as the mystery element is all a lot of fun, when you do go to ‘Edwin Drood,’ you’re going to a theatre to see a show about going to a theatre and what that relationship between actors and audiences has been for years.
Also, if you want to reach people, theatre is not always the best way to do it.
My work is very popular with performers, and there are theatre people who get what I’m doing and what tradition I’m working in. I’m very grateful to them – they’re my people, who understand why I work the way I do.
The ending is really the most important part of the movie. If the first hour and 20 minutes is terrific and the last ten minutes stinks, everybody walks out of the theatre and says: ‘That was a lousy movie!’
I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high school. It was a really nice place. There was a New Directions paperback. It was the Pound/Fenollosa book, ‘The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.’
I am a huge theatre geek.
In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it’s an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.
Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor’s job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story.
There is always a sacred hour in the theatre – after rehearsals and before performances, in the afternoon, between three and five o’clock. Normally the theatre is empty then, and this is a wonderful hour.
If I only did theatre I would have had to waitress, and I didn’t want to waitress.
I am grateful to theatre for making me what I am today. But it’s not like theatre is my first love. I am equally attached to cinema, which is, actually, a child of theatre, since it borrows heavily from it.
I started off dancing and playing sports, and I joined the drama stuff, the theatre stuff in middle school because my friends were involved, and it was kind of the cool thing to do.
Enjoy the films I do, get entertained, get your money’s worth, and when you leave the theatre, leave it all behind!
In theatre, you learn the story is more important than the actor.
When people leave the theatre, they should remember a line, a character, a sequence or emotion. With entertainment, I want to give meaningful cinema.
I prefer theatre to television – you get to feel the love.
I’ve gotten to go wonderful places, meet interesting and intelligent people, and I started of course in the theatre and continue to work in the theatre where there is some intelligence involved in it.
My introduction to acting was through theatre, so I actually saw a couple of Broadway shows that made me want to be an actor.
Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.
Some years ago, I was invited to speak in Houston, Texas. They said I was a founder of ‘postmodern theatre’. So I said to my office, ‘This is ridiculous for me to go and speak about postmodern theatre when I don’t know what it means, but… they’re paying me a lot of money, so I’ll go.’
Opera is musical theatre, and the music can teach you so much about the theatre. Very often I use musical terms to think about how I comport myself on stage: I employ ‘rubati,’ ‘ostinati,’ ‘cadenze.’ Finding these parallels is very fascinating for me.
I don’t have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there’s something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.
I love theatre. It’s far more satisfying than film. Sometimes there’s a collective sigh from the audience, or it’s so quiet you can hear a pin drop. I couldn’t believe how easy acting was when there’s an audience; after a few previews I almost couldn’t do it without one.
My interest in theatre and storytelling began in my mother’s kitchen. It was a meeting place for my mother’s large circle of friends.
My phrase has always been that I am looking for the versatility of theatre in film. I think I have been quite lucky in that so far.
Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.
In the theatre, once you’ve gone about eight rows back, everybody else is just listening to you. You’re very small, and nobody can really see what you’re doing.
Theatre is a must for actors. They should try it at least once. It makes you disciplined, teaches you to respect your work, and boosts your confidence as an actor.
I had a country upbringing in a predominantly Maori community, and that contrasted with a very multi-cultured arts community in the Aro Valley in Wellington: growing up around a lot of theatre and poets and writers and stuff.
I definitely want to go back to the theatre. It is hard work, it is repetitive, but it is intensely rewarding.
I grew up performing in theatre.
I’d like to do some more classical work if I do some more theatre.
I did audition a lot. One’s agent is keen to get you into film and TV because there’s more money. I was always getting myself into commitments to theatre companies.
Theatre was always my passion.
My plan was to go to New York and do some theatre, and then I got the script for ‘Psych.’ I was like, ‘Ahh – just as I thought I was out, you pulled me back in!’ I had a great meeting with the show creator and we laid out the parameters to make the show work: what I would do, what he would let me do.
The theatre fulfills, whereas the cinema is empty.
I started using film as part of live theatre performance – what used to be called performance art – and I became intrigued by film.
It’s communication – that’s what theatre is all about.
I like the theatre because you paint with broad strokes. To me the theatre is stretching its definition really far.
Theatre is where my passion lies – I just love it. I love watching it, and I love doing it.
Having started out in theatre, I feel an impulse to do it as much as I can.
Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating ‘expression‘ of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious.
The cool thing is that, unlike film, the theatre roles for women get better and better as you get older.
At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what’s wrong with illusion?
I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you’re playing.
I don’t like going for more than a year without doing theatre. I don’t mind falling flat on my face so long as I feel I’m open to the possibility of something extraordinary happening.
I grew up in the theatre. It’s where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.
I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre.
There’s little money in theatre.
Soon I worked during twelve years in theater works of the prestigious Theatre National Populaire. It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting.
My dream is to eventually open a children‘s theatre.
There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the entrepreneur into the creative economy.
I have done 16 films with David Dhawan and I have tried to do every character differently, be it Sharafat Ali, Mutthu Swamy or Calender, because of my theatre experience.
The money is better in films and television. But in terms of acting, theatre is more rewarding.
Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn’t really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me.
Every government secretary of state or minister should jolly well go to the theatre, go to a concert, go to an art gallery, go to a museum, become somehow interested in these things. If they’re not interested, they shouldn’t be in government, full stop.
In the theatre, if you say ‘Macbeth‘, all the actors will start looking very anxious. I’m so well-trained not to say it in the theatre that I can hardly say it in normal life.
I recall the night that President McKinley died. I was working at the time at a theatre in St. Louis. The oppressive feeling was in the air. I could not make the people laugh.
Nothing was planned in my career. I just went with the flow and took everything that came to me. Selling potato chips was obvious, as it was a family business. When friends suggested I should try theatre, I gave it a shot. Then I did a lot of advertisements, and then movies happened.
The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: ‘Tobacco Road’, ‘Abie’s Irish Rose‘ and our old friend ‘Spider-Man’, which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong.
Theatre is live content, and you can tell if you have worked your audience.
When I was at drama school I wanted to do classical theatre. It just so happened that I did a film when I came out and I moved that way.
I loved living and breathing theatre so much that I decided I had to find a way to bring my desire to act and my ability to support myself together. I’d run through the possibilities in Washington, so that meant moving to New York.
I started doing amateur theatre and played Rosa Parks at the age of 12 or 13. At 16, I decided it was what I wanted to do.
My mother asks when I will do some theatre, and there is something about getting your 15 minute call. That is what you become an actor for – performing in front of people and getting the love from the audience.
When I was in college, all the pretty women were in the theatre, so I auditioned for a play.
I think as a filmmaker my first contribution would just be to make a good movie that people would love to see and leave the theatre charged, with a sense of excitement.
When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called ‘In The Abyss Of Coney Island.’ That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
Films take up so much time, and with theatre, you do have to plan a period of time that you can be free.
The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time.
My mum raised us on classic movies and a lot of musical theatre.
I don’t think it’s the job of theatre at the moment to provide political propaganda; that would be simplistic. We have to explore our situation further before we will understand it.
The interest of my mother was more in the entertainment field. She loved to go to concerts and to the theatre.
I was a musical theatre geek in high school and college.
Every time you get the chance to work with somebody you admire and would like to collaborate with… it feels like the best opportunity that’s ever come your way, whether that’s in fringe theatre or a really big-budget Hollywood movie.
If you swap it about, do television, theatre, film, you can go on surprising yourself. The problem is you get employed to do something you’ve already done. They want something from that sheep pen of performances they’ve seen you do.
I coach young people. I have a group called BTP – Broadway Theatre Project.
My experiences in film and theatre in the States have been much more rigorous-in England there’s an environment of, Let’s try this.
I don’t really have a theatre background at all.
I love the rehearsal process in the theatre, and the visceral sense of contact and communication with a live audience.
When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, ‘I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.’ I wouldn’t have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn’t a clever man.
Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.
The idea of doing theatre always terrified me because I get terrible stage fright. In the early 1970s I was offered a panto but the thought of going on stage was just too mortifying.
For seven years I did very little theatre, and I have to make up some time.
I’m ready for theatre. I’m ready for dramas, period stuff, films. I want to achieve everything.
With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.
I’d auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and I didn’t get a place and it was terrifying.
I just loved being in the theatre with all those crazy, creative people.
I love all the arts – so museums, theatre, music, walks near trees or by the ocean, time with people, psychological readings.
It’s great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people.
Musical theatre is something I’m familiar with, I’ve been doing that.
When I’m doing theatre, I prefer to be doing cinema. When I’m doing cinema, I prefer to be doing theatre.
When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.
I never studied theatre; I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.
I feel like the rap metal at the end of the 1990s destroyed rock music for everybody and suddenly everybody felt like they had to apologise for being in rock bands. People suddenly felt bad about wanting to reach massive audiences and the sense of theatre, that we have in our live show, became something to avoid.
The thing about theatre is that when it is actually occurring, when you have the audience on your side, you absolutely think you can will them to do anything. It’s exhilarating.
I remember a time when I was younger, when if you had to see an actor, you had to go to the theatre and watch a film.
The first time I came to London on my own, I was 15. I was absolutely oblivious to so many things. I had no expectations, no fears. I just came to do a National Youth Theatre season one summer. It was just brilliant.
I started off in a small theatre performance company and worked my way into commercials.
I always liked the visuals to be choice and at the same time minimalist. And, I love black boxes. After all, that’s what theatre is, it’s an empty space, and it’s both limited and unlimited because the space is the space, but what you can do with people’s imaginations is really endless.
It wasn’t until I went to college that I met the theatre people and began to admire them because they were learning a trade that was guaranteed to make money!
Lou Tyrrell has created a theatre that is a safe haven for playwrights, a birthing center for new American writing. Arts Garage has created a vital, enthusiastic audience for theatre, music, painting and sculpture in Delray Beach.
London theatre is different: it is a commercial theatre that brings the whole of society into one place. And Shakespeare grasped, better than anyone else, what it means to engage the entire audience.
People come to the theatre to be excited and uplifted – I want to inspire my audience.
I’ve done panel shows, which I enjoy, and on those you’re recording half-an-hour of TV and sometimes they film for two hours. But with ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ you’re on camera for eight hours, with a large theatre audience watching – and in between you’re being filmed for ITV2 as you eat your lunch.
The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting – 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.
I’ve been doing theatre since I was 5 years old.
When you do a film, you get picked up in a car, lunch is free. Theatre is really hard, and you get absolutely no money.
I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first, I wanted to work in the theatre, but there was something about the ambience of film, especially American films, that always attracted me.
When I was 12, I got a manager, but my mom was against it. It took a lot of convincing. But when I got a job at Manhattan Theatre Club, I think she saw how passionate I was about it and that I worked really hard – and now she’s super supportive.
Once in awhile, there’s stuff that makes me say, That’s what theatre’s about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn’t happen very often.
You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.
I have such a passion for theatre.
I know what I am able and not able to do. Fashion? OK. Fashion… clothes in theatre, in an opera, in a concert – all that I love. To make a movie myself… no!
I remember that Pu La had come for one of my premieres and I was patiently waiting to hear his verdict of my acting, but when he came out of the theatre during interval, all he asked me was about my father and his well being, such was their friendship.
The British theatre and establishment is so hard to penetrate, and there are so many talented people involved in it. So, to be counted among some of those actresses… It doesn’t get better than that.
I think I’m a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn’t want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time.
Theatre is a sacred space for actors. You are responsible; you are in the driving-seat.
In Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think about its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding.
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
If you’re interested or like it, but could be just as happy living in a regular town, having a regular job, maybe doing little theatre, you’re better off and you’ll be a happier person. This is too gut-wrenching and heartbreaking.
I love the theatre. It’s a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It’s a nice way to live your life.
At heart, this job is about continuing to make great theatre for the people of Sheffield – a city I’ve known and loved since childhood.
The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on countless theatre visits and trips to places of interest.
People prefer doing films. That is not the case with me. I don’t do theatre because I have to but because it makes me feel alive. I enjoy the whole process of rehearsing, though repetition can make it tedious.
My parents met in the theatre, and I thought that was so romantic. My dad was a scenic designer and my mom was a dancer, and that’s how they met; they met in the theatre.
I was very lucky. I left college, and Richard Eyre was in charge of the National Theatre. I was offered the lead in ‘The Seagull’ with no experience and went on to do five plays there.
What interests me about life most is people, and the why of the world. That’s what theatre looks at: it examines life, and gives it a cohesiveness that life doesn’t have.
When we’d suggested doing it, the Theatre Royal management had said, ‘Nobody wants to see Waiting for Godot.’ As it happened, every single ticket was booked for every single performance, and this confirmation that our judgment was right was sweet. Audiences came to us from all over the world. It was amazing.
I always had a good time in theatre, even when shows don’t turn out as well as I’d like.
I love test screenings. Some directors don’t, I know. But I love it. I think it’s because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they’re responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.
The first time I stepped on stage in the local theatre I knew what I needed to do – I knew I had found the right place to be.
I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I’ve given up any hope of being considered a director.
Characters in TV and theatre tend to experience a lot of conflict, so I push myself through sport to physical and emotional levels that hurt so I’ve some other reference for extreme experience that isn’t me shouting at my girlfriend or my mum. It’s a way of controlling the uncontrollable.
In 1969, I wrote a musical called ‘Mother Earth.’ It was a rock musical with an ecology theme. We did it at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California where I was a member. It was a smash hit in this small theater.
There is an atmosphere about the picture theatre that speaks of entertainment and relaxation. The charming surroundings, good music, and the fact that each visitor is determined to enjoy a few hours of holiday all exert an influence on the mind.
I love England, the people, the parks, the theatre.
My first interest was always music, and somehow that channelled itself into films and acting. I don’t know what the natural transition of it was. I mean I acted a little bit when I was young and like any kid would in a community theatre.
I did theatre when I was nine, I think. Nine and ten, and that was just the beginning of my whole involvement in acting, my whole interest. I don’t really remember it that well. But it was really fun. I mean, it was exciting just to be on stage in front of an audience. It gives you a different kind of rush.
I’ve been asked a lot why didn’t ‘Ruined’ go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn’t find a home on Broadway.
I’m excited about the idea of an act of theatre triggering a parallel creative act of writing.
In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors.
I feel there’s enough seriousness in the world without seeing it in the theatre.
All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That’s what makes theatre live. That’s why it persists.
The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.
I get bored at the theatre a lot because I notice that there’s not always a connection between the actors. They may be technically proficient, but they’re not surprising each other. I’m thrilled by actors who make choices that are surprising.
The first horror film I remember seeing in the theatre was Halloween and from the first scene when the kid puts on the mask and it is his POV, I was hooked.
When I am shooting, I am inside the theatre, when I am in the editing room, I am inside the theatre. I always try to feel what they will feel. I see a film, not as a director, but as the audience. If I am entertained, they will be, too.
I used to go with my parents and loved it, I was in school plays, and I started reading plays before I started reading novels. I’ll defend it to the hilt. When theatre is good it is fabulous.
I’ve done movies with Oliver Stone and Michael Mann. And I’ve done quite a few dramas in my time, from the theatre to film work. I just think the audience is used to seeing me on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and ‘K-9,’ and ‘Curly Sue’ and of course, ‘According to Jim.’ I think that my comedies have been the most popular.
The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage.
Unease is not an emotion I get often in the theatre, and I like it.
I did theatre in the U.S. because there, content-wise, it’s very light. In India, theatre tends to get preachy.
A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through?
Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it’s gone.
Theatre just fills me up so much.
Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.
If there’s one thing that I’ve done on purpose it’s to take whatever job, so long as it’s interesting and challenging, whether it’s theatre, radio, TV or film.
Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel, including the philosophers Adi Ophir and Anat Biletzki, the sociologist Uri Ram, the professor of theatre Avraham Oz and the poet Yitzhak Laor.
I knew nothing about film at all. I suppose the biggest surprise is all these things. In the theatre we sort of do, I might do two or three key interviews and that would be it.
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.
My family is not at all involved in television, or film, or theatre, or any of it, really.
My parents used to take me to a lot of theatre when I was young.
I’d quite like to do a film but I’d also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It’s harder for women because there aren’t as many challenging roles.
I didn’t learn anything about acting until I joined the Group Theatre. They taught me an entirely new approach, an entirely new technique.
I’d like more kids to go and see theatre because it really is amazing.
Part of what I enjoy about the theatre and acting is that sense of history.
I miss Broadway! I’m still a theatre kid, don’t worry!
I have a dialect myself; it’s more pronounced, because I have studied theatre and been in England. It’s half-British, half-Indian.
I went to the University/Resident Theatre Association auditions. Deans come and watch you in this theater. You have three minutes, and you have to do two contrasting monologues – at that time, this is 2003 – one classical and one contemporary.
There are many actors who’ll make their living in other areas, and they’ll say they don’t like theatre. What they’re saying is that they’re afraid of theatre because they know it will separate those who can from those who can’t.
I remember going to the theatre when I was little and the lights going down and just getting really scared about what was going to happen up there.
My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.
I got into theatre very early, so yes I was surrounded by gay people quite early and frequently.
We’re so bereft of support of theatre in this day and age.
The best theatre I’ve done, I’ve done right here in this living room.
I want to do movies that I’m proud of where my kids, at some point, can see and I can feel comfortable sitting there watching it with them. And just that move people. That make people feel a little bit better about themselves when they leave the theatre.
The voices of moral authority in the theatre demanded only punctuality and physical performance. In the light of continuing pressure and stress, the occasional lip service paid to moderation was meaningless. Starvation and poisoning were not excesses, but measures taken to stay within the norm.
I started doing more theatre because I love that and I ended up doing television. I ended up doing it.
As far as I’m concerned, Cate Blanchett is a goddess, but she’s really down to earth. She’s got all those Oscars, she’s made all those amazing films and she could spend her whole life doing that, but what does she also do? She gives birth to three boys and creates her own theatre in Sydney.
A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what’s true.
With dance and theatre, I think people get very nervous about not knowing the right things. They feel like they’ve missed something, or that they’re not bright enough to watch it. It’s not a test.
Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.
Acting must be scaled down for the screen. A drawing room is a lot smaller than a theatre auditorium.
The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I’ll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.
I went through a low phase for two years when I had a string of flops. At that time, I even felt that I was in the wrong profession and that I should leave acting. But thankfully, I utilised that time to introspect and went on a self-exploration trip. I did theatre in between, and it helped grow the fire within me.
Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.
I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights.
Every time I listened to Lux Radio Theatre, I wanted to vomit.
One of my beliefs is that there are certain institutions within a community which stand for the spirit and heart of that community, there’s the church, the local football team, the local pub and the theatre.
I just enjoy acting, whatever area – theatre, film, television.
In 1973, ‘Sizwe Banzi is Dead‘ and ‘The Island,’ which I co-wrote with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona, transferred from The Royal Court Theatre to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End.
I used to say that theatre was my favourite thing. But the more I do film, the more I appreciate it.
I was really, really, really enthusiastic as a kid. I was up for anything. I was hugely into music and theatre. I was a big musical theatre kid; I loved reading.
I quite enjoy fame, especially when you go to conventions in America where they treat you like a god with stretch limos and the whole fame thing, but then when you come back to Britain, you end up changing in a toilet in a theatre off West End and that’s really good, because that is what it’s about.
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room.
I love Tim Minchin, Bill Bailey, and Hans Teeuwen, and I’m trying to synthesise elements of theatre into my show a little bit more.
I went to the University of Michigan and have a BFA in Musical Theatre.
I feel that I communicate best when I am not deliberately being linear. Along this same line, I feel some of the best sermons I’ve ever heard were in the theatre rather than the pulpit – as, for example, in the Theatre of the Absurd.
I would most like to do film or TV. Possibly theatre in the future, but I’m in L.A. a lot of the time at the moment and if I was going to do theatre it would be in London.
I would love to do more theatre, musicals… everything.
I don’t really know Hollywood, but living and shooting in L.A. was very motivating, inspiring. The lights, the extras, their American faces, the energy, the Orpheum Theatre. It was all very inspiring.
I think film likes me better than the theatre does for some reason.
Our job is to make manifest the story, to be it. In a sense, the theatre is such a big star itself, bigger than any Shakespearean actor I could hire, that we should take the opportunity to fill it with voice and verse and movement, not interpretation.
I love going to the theatre.
This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It’s not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young. It’s not an intellectual cinema in America.
A few years later, my Uncle David took me to the Earle Theatre to hear Duke Ellington.
A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.
There’s nowhere to hide in the theatre. You can’t be the one in rehearsal who doesn’t know their lines.
I like the detail work of telling a story in small pieces, as is done in movie-making, and also the long leap of faith needed to see a theatre performance through each night. Both require focus and self-discipline.
Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn’t for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.
The theatre, our theatre, comes from the Greeks.
Even today, my father watches my films only in the theatre with the general public. And he’s very tough. His first call will be to the director and the camera man, and only then will he send me a message.
I’ve played a lot of roles I haven’t wanted to play, either because they needed someone in the theatre or because they couldn’t do it without me ’cause they don’t have anyone else the right age.
I had my appendix removed in my 20s. I was in the middle of a play with Helen Mirren at the Royal Court Theatre, a fabulous career break. Then two weeks in I began suffering the most horrendous pain and had to pull out. Sadly, by the time I’d recovered, the show’s run had ended.
Theatre can’t be done again and again and again and again – it’s organic.
In the theatre, we’re all charlatans and liars and scavengers and fly-by-nights.
Whenever I get a good script, I don’t care whether it’s telly or theatre or big screen – I’m not bothered.
I would like to do theatre because it scares me, and I think you should do things that scare you.
Some government expenditure actually makes a profit. Our theatre leads the world. Loads of tourists must be attracted by the fact that you could spend a week in London doing nothing but visit superb museums and galleries, free.
You get used to being lazy doing films, but classical theatre’s going to finish me off.
Because I like theatre and I love a challenge. With ‘ZEBRA!’ I’ve found a new Australian play where I can create a character first – that’s what I live to do.
I’ve made a point of trying not to play the same part, and of moving between theatre and film and TV. The idea is that by the time you come back, you have been away for a year and people have forgotten you. If you like having time off, which I do, that’s a good career strategy.
It’s important to move the theatre into the 21st Century.
Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.
My old manager of the Irish National Theatre said ‘Don’t worry about being a star, just worry about being a working actor. Just keep working.’ I think that’s really good advice.
Theatre is where I am confident and happy.
People ask me if I ever feel outside the Hollywood loop, and I never do, because both of us do a lot of theatre, so it’s great for New York and it’s also half-way between Europe and the west coast, so it’s the best of both worlds.
I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look.
I just wanted to be one of those actors who works at the National Theatre the whole time.
I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.
I sometimes think that theatre is a torture.
I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I’d begun to write a little bit.
Every form of theatre has something in common with a visit to the doctor. On the way out, one should always feel better than on the way in.
