Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always been drawn to stories and telling them; whether it was through being a part of theater when I was a little kid, or film, or with music, there's just been an innate desire to feel that connection.
It's nice because working in England I'm know for working in television and theater when you get a chance to come out, it is quite fun to be out from behind the mask. You need to let people know who you are.
There are television critics, movie critics, and theater critics too who I like and who I follow and I get genuinely bummed when they don't like something that I've written because I usually agree with them.
I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.
I never studied anything about film technique in school. Eventually, I realized that cinema and theater are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both.
Do theater. Because you'll develop a craft that you'll always have. It'll give you a chance to really learn how to act and you won't go into the world with a few measly tricks that will only carry you so far.
I think musical theater fans - obsessive fans - are very much like Comic Con fans in our personalities. We're very possessive, and we're very obsessive, and we're very critical. So don't screw with our stuff.
Before we had the kids, my husband and I were traveling a lot and working and really enjoying our lives and each other. We both love the theater and books and travel and so we were really having a lot of fun.
With 'Girls'... I feel like there's an impulse to try to make it look better or neater or more perfect, and when I watch theater, television, movies, it's always the imperfection I'm always more attracted to.
I've always been into theater and movies. When I was in school, I did a monologue for my talent show. I would go to the local theater. I was always in dance. I was always performing. That was always my thing.
The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.
I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.
I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work.
I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.
I did an internship in the Silicon Valley during the Internet boom. I couldn't imagine sitting in a cubicle the rest of my life, so I gave acting a try. I would have been happy doing theater and making nothing.
If ever I feel I might be able to tackle it, I'd love to try holding a spear or something in the theater, or opening a door, or anything, just to try it, you know, because it must be some marvelous magic thing.
I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to think of yourself as a biological scientist of some sort, pretty well everything else seems frivolous by comparison.
I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that's what I did.
I happen to love working in cinema, but the theater is always there... you know, and I would never shut the door on it. Even though it's been quite a bit of time since I've done a play, last one was in New York.
Theater actually took time to pique my interest. It just wasn't a part of my upbringing. I don't have anyone in the arts in my family. I wasn't brought up particularly cultured. It was always TV and film for me.
In Michigan, if you want to act, it's local theater, it's high school theater and it's going to camp and putting on plays in the summer, and I always loved doing that. There was something that just drew me to it.
I have a particular pair of headphones I love so much I bring them everywhere: Beats Studio. It's perfect for watching movies as well because you feel like you have your own theater with you, even with your iPad.
When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism. You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.
Cary Grant was wonderful to work with on stage. He would move downstage, so that as he looked at me the audience had to look at me, too. He knew a lot about the theater and how to move around. He was very secure.
I just like the continue doing what I've been doing. A melange of funny, straight drama, television, movies, a little theater here and there wouldn't hurt. So if I can keep doing that, I'll be a very happy person.
When I was 13 years old, a professional theater company in my town needed a kid actor. I auditioned, and I got the part, so for just a few weeks I became a member of the company and I met some professional actors.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
Well, really the way worked was that I had probably built fifty robots before Mystery Science Theater, and I had sold them in a store in Minneapolis in a store called Props, which was kind of a high end gift shop.
My parents are avid consumers of art, collectors of African American paintings, and have always gone to the theater. My mother has always been an activist, too. As long as I can remember, we were marching in lines.
I started in community theater at 7 years old. I loved being on stage and performing. At the time, I didn't correlate that the stuff I was doing on stage was the same thing that I was watching in my favorite films.
If you love acting and you've ever experienced theater, then you know that in a movie it's almost impossible to live out that experience, unless you're a Pacino or a De Niro or somebody who gets to pick their parts.
I think that I'm lucky in that, even at levels where I, by and large, wasn't making enough money to sustain my life, I worked as a male nanny, I waited tables and did what I had to, to keep doing theater and acting.
I read and watch movies. I can't go to the movie theater much anymore, though, because I get recognized. It's worse sometimes if I wear a costume and try not to get recognized. I watch most of my films on airplanes.
I acted when I was young, but at 19, I had my own theater company where I acted but also directed. I also did some theater in Los Angeles. So I was always wanting to direct, even before I became an established actor.
Before I ever acted as an amateur - which I did a great deal at school and at university - I used to go to the theater with my parents in the north of England, where I was born and brought up... Theater of all sorts.
The wonderful thing about theater as an art form is it's a purely empirical art form. It's all about what works. And every show, every production, is created anew right from the moment you go into the rehearsal hall.
I discovered that I wanted to be an actor back when I did my first play in junior high. I've been doing theater in junior high and high school, and I just kept feeding the fire, kept wanting to pursue acting full-on.
By 1949, there was no more work for me out there, and I went to New York in 1950 and just did whatever I could. Mainly television. Some Broadway. A lot of dinner theater work, which is not a very satisfactory medium.
So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing.
There are no taking days off. There are no distractions. If I had that, I physically wouldn't be capable of going onstage and performing live theater. It's extremely demanding. I have to be in ballet class every day.
I love TV, don't get me wrong. But with film, you're just banging out this one product, and you're not waiting on another script. You have your script. It's great in that way. It's as close to theater as you can get.
With my good friend Rob Penny, I founded the Black Horizons Theater in Pittsburgh with the idea of using the theater to politicize the community or, as we said in those days, to raise the consciousness of the people.
I met the Colonel when Elvis was recording some song I'd written for one of his movies. Elvis was just having fun with the gang and all the Memphis boys and Colonel Parker was sitting over here in like a theater seat.
Hallmark makes beautiful films that feel as if they should be watched in a theater. The Hall family knows the power of stories, and they give us unforgettable movies with heart and depth and the resonance of classics.
I like roles that are on the extreme ends of the spectrum, and there's special appeal in exploring these slightly forgotten plays that people might think of as subjects for academic term papers instead of live theater.
And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I'd won the lottery.
Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.
If you are in a movie theater, you can look two people down and they are laughing while you are laughing or you can look three people down and they love that song that you love. It is living proof that you are not alone.
I love singing! I was a musical theater girl in high school. We were always singing and dancing around, and just doing little community theaters and high school musicals. Then, when I got to NYU, I focused more on drama.
I moved to New York to work in theater, so my range of motion was really from where I lived - which was downtown, in the Lower East Side - to Midtown, where the theaters are. So I got to know New York, Midtown and south.