Top 100 Actors Theater Quotes
#1. I really like to work with theater actors. Theater actors tend to do lots of independent movies, and those are the actors that I like.
Jason Blum
#2. I actually love going to a lot of theater movies. I just love watching actors work and seeing how people tell stories.
Zeljko Ivanek
#3. What's great about New York is that there are a lot of theater actors and actresses, who are trained actors, that they bring onto the show. They're so talented, in such a weird, quirky and ominous way. And it's great to be able to work with new faces, too.
Natalie Zea
#4. I did a lot of theater in school. I thought maybe I wanted to go to law school or be a judge or a politician. And then I just kind of got smitten by the process of rehearsal and working with other actors and those kinds of challenges. And then comedy.
Rashida Jones
#5. Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.
Sam Mendes
#6. In my theater days I assumed that you had to get rid of yourself to do a character well, and I don't think I was a very good actor when I did that.
Charlie Day
#7. Growing up I was involved in children's theater, so I was definitely on the path to be an actor and a singer.
Victor Garber
#8. 'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.
Tracy Letts
#9. I wanted to be in film. I wanted to be a film student, possibly be a director or cinematographer, not an actor. That was my goal. I didn't believe I had the physical beauty that I'd seen projected and advertised in movies, in theater. It just wasn't for me.
Pam Grier
#11. It's a tough transition really for theater actors to adjust to television or film, and all of these years later, I still have a tendency to play it too big.
Jack Black
#12. Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc ... ) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create
Robert Bresson
#13. My strength as an actor is in the theater - I know that about myself. Some actors get onstage and vanish, but I'm much better there than I am on screen.
Stacy Keach
#14. Just as theater has to be where people live, actors have to go out in the marketplace - not be cut off by a lens. Either an artist grows or he stagnates.
Ralph Waite
#15. 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.
Trevor Nunn
#16. It's a shame how a lot of actors use theater as a stepping stone to film and television work; I think it shouldn't be treated that way. Maybe it's narcissism or something. I think we should always go back to it. I try and do a play a year, and I think that's really helped me.
Peter Dinklage
#17. I learned how to turn it on and turn it off. You learn that in theater, too, but for film work, I learned from doing 'Henry,' I learned how to leave work at work and go home. There's always spillover. Actors speak of this.
Michael Rooker
#18. I started off doing plays as a theater actor. But I never thought of it in terms of it leading anywhere. I was just trying to be the best actor that I could be in the context of what I was doing.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#19. When you left this one theater in Norfolk, the actors had to walk through the lobby to get out to the street. People would see you and say nice things, tell you that you were good. So, pretty soon I'm pretending to forget things backstage, going through the lobby a couple of times.
Stephen Furst
#20. I would absolutely recommend for actors to start in the theater because it establishes a foundation in your craft that you can build off of.
Freddy Rodriguez
#21. I grew up in the theater with my mom and that's how I knew I wanted to be an actor in the first place.
Condola Rashad
#22. If you want to be a theater actor, where do you live now? Young actors struggle on a Broadway salary. A lot of them live in shoe boxes; some of them are literally three to a shoebox. New York has gotten prohibitively expensive.
Stephen Spinella
#23. In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd.
Karl Kraus
#24. Theater actors are just tolerated. You have to be a movie star to be a celebrity.
Michael Gambon
#25. I find it very invigorating having Ken Lonergan, who's an established, Pulitzer-nominated playwright doing Howards End, or Chris Hampton who's won an Oscar writing a TV series, or having an actor like Mark Rylance, who is probably England's leading theater actor, in the lead in Wolf Hall.
Colin Callender
#26. I love bad movies, whereas going to the theater for me is a painful experience. I think it's really hard to sit and watch actors do something live and have it not go well.
Zoe Kazan
#27. What happens in Israel, it's not so divided between being a film actor, or a TV actor - usually, we just do everything. I do theater, film, and television, and the theater is mostly financed by the government.
Meital Dohan
#28. A film is the director's medium. The theater is an actor's.
Hugh Jackman
#29. If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing.
Enrico Colantoni
#30. All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.
Lauren Bacall
#31. I didn't grow up knowing actors' names, and my parents weren't theater people.
Carrie Coon
#32. Tim Robbins had real confidence in college. He literally stole actors from the theater department at UCLA to be in his plays. The department heads got so mad at him.
Daphne Zuniga
#33. Actors are all about entrances, but writers are all about exits.
Vincent H. O'Neil
#34. On the whole, British actors star in theater, and I think there's something quite grounding about that.
Jeremy Irvine
#35. That's what I love most about writers
they're such lousy actors.
Vincent H. O'Neil
#36. Being a theater actor, I've done a lot of plays where I've seen someone else play the same role in another production. Especially with the classics: Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams.
Jacki Weaver
#37. I have a company in the U.K., a performance-capture studio. We're looking to push the boundaries of performance-capture technology in film and video games, but also in live theater, using real-time performance capture with actors onstage, and combining that with holographic imagery.
Andy Serkis
#38. So many actors started on soap operas. So yeah, I'd graduated Julliard and done some theater. I've done a few guest spots on TV but nothing that long-term. I did a little 'E.R.' back when it was on, and a pilot for 'Cold Case.'
Finn Wittrock
#39. Sir Larry could be very strict and a disciplinarian, too. He had many faces; he wore many hats. But, ultimately, he loved the theater and he loved actors.
Derek Jacobi
#40. When you're working on a film, it's not theater; you don't have a few weeks of rehearsal. A lot of times you are showing up on set, and you've never been to the place; you've never met the other actors you're working with.
Ben Schnetzer
#41. I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#42. I did all the musicals in high school, and I loved it. And then I got to theater school at college, and was like, "No, I'm a serious actor. I want to do Shakespeare. I want to do classical theater." I took myself very seriously.
Timothy Omundson
#43. Everybody has his own theater, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwrite, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.
Julius Charles Hare
#44. I love Back Stage. I have lots of theater friends and actors who depend on Back Stage.
Anurag Kashyap
#45. I love stage actors. The pool of world class actors that have done theater [is big], there's a higher opportunity of grabbing somebody from that pool.
M. Night Shyamalan
#46. I don't think actors are to blame for poor writing. The culture changes first, and the theater follows it. In the case of the movies, it's the same thing.
Christopher Reeve
#47. Typically, among the audience members joining the actors, the director, Ann Ciccolella and myself, about half of these theater goers have read the novel [Anthem], and half have not read it. That is interesting.
Jeff Britting
#48. Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual.
Pedro Almodovar
#49. My stage fright gets worse at every performance. During the overture I hope for a theater fire, typhoon, revolution in the Pentagon.
Hildegard Knef
#50. I was sort of trained in drama. I went to theater school. I started on the stage. Comedy is absolutely an essential part of what we do as actors. But I think in the grand scheme of things, comedy was born from tragedy. First there was tragedy and then there were the comedies.
Alex O'Loughlin
#51. A lot of actors say that theater's the thing for them. And that's great, and I'm not one to speak with any authority about it because of not having done it properly. For me, movies are what I love.
Christian Bale
#52. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
W. H. Auden
#53. I love working with actors, and it's all been based on my being trained in the theater.
John Wells
#54. I go to the theater because I need help dealing with my life; I want to see the greatest questions addressed. I need to see actors grappling with things that matter.
Ellen McLaughlin
#55. I love the chemistry that can be created onstage between the actors and the audience. It's molecular, even, the energies that can go back and forth. I started in theater, and when I first went into movies, I felt that my energy was going to blow out the camera.
Glenn Close
#56. I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors.
Ellen McLaughlin
#57. Certainly people are always very envious of me. When I join a new theater company, the other actors look down the program, see my Return of the Jedi credit and say, 'Oh, you were part of Star Wars.' I smile and say, 'Yes, but only for twenty-six and a half seconds.'
Caroline Blakiston
#58. In high school, theater was all I ever wanted to do. I didn't see that I was going to set it aside for so many years and take a right turn into television. Of course, wanting to do theater is something you hear a lot from actors. I think I've been embarrassed to be in that big cliche.
Mare Winningham
#59. I love Chicago, but in a lot of ways it's a disappointment. You can work there for years and years, and because you're in Chicago, you don't get the recognition. It has some of the best theater in the country, but when they shoot a movie there, they bring in all their actors.
John Malkovich
#60. Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.
Betty Buckley
#61. I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.
Elizabeth Strout
#62. That's one of the things about theater vs. film - with theater, actors have a little more control, and one of the disappointing things about films is that once you're done shooting, anything can happen, you know?
Peter Dinklage
#63. I think theater and church are so relatable because it's traditional call-and-response in the way that an audience interacts with the actors.
Danielle Brooks
#64. Theater is a really exciting place to return to all the time because it's incredible training for an actor.
Zoe Lister-Jones
#65. There wasn't even a movie theater in the town. Nothing. Not even any fast food chains of any kind. Regardless, I knew that I was going to leave and become an actor, and be in film and television, and I've done it.
Kristen Hager
#66. A theater is such a revealing form of art, such a transparent and good actors, they're such powerful individuals. I always kind of dreamt that one day I will open my mouth on stage.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#67. Film actors reach a certain level, but they don't get beyond it unless they work in the theater.
Shirley Knight
#68. Instead of being a theater actor who sometimes does movies I became a movie actor who sometimes does theater.
John Lithgow
#69. In all of time, all of space, there will only be one you. How can you be anything but perfect? As you are. Mad, sad, glad. You are amazing.
Cindy Marcus
#70. This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
Carl Jung
#71. Actors and writers need to come back to the theater because it's a place where you can learn. You have to pay your dues, and people who haven't paid their dues in the theater, I think, have a hard time creating a whole career.
Joanne Woodward
#72. I didn't know what the path was that I wanted to be as an actor, to be honest. I've been doing a lot of theater since I was a kid, so I was just sort of taking opportunities.
Guy Pearce
#73. Any actor, any playwright who's worked a life in the theater knows how to do things cheaply and quickly. It's just all by necessity. Invention is everything.
Israel Horovitz
#74. I come from the theater, so for me rehearsal is vital and a way of life. There are many film directors who don't believe in it and some actors who prefer not to rehearse.
Hugh Jackman
#75. You create this situation where you are so dependent on each other. That's especially true for film. In theater, the actor has much more say, much more control, for better or worse.
Susan Sarandon
#76. Actors and actresses make magic,' I said. 'They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.
Anne Rice
#77. Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible.
Neil Gaiman
#78. Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.
Thomas Jane
#79. The taboo for straight actors playing gay is gone ... My mother was squirming a bit in the theater because she comes from a different generation.
Dean Cain
#80. There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.
Tim DeKay
#81. I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness - there's nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you've ever had.
Laura Benanti
#83. The most reliable pleasure afforded by theater is the intermission.
Mason Cooley
#84. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that.
Diego Luna
#85. Reading Dostoyevsky is like sitting in the front row of a theater, where the actors' spit lands on your face.
Charles Baxter
#86. I think a lot of theater actors that were great, like Walken or Glenn Close, later became film actors.
Sam Rockwell
#87. I came out of school just at the time regional theater was first expanding. All of a sudden, lots of new companies needed actors.
Charles Kimbrough
#88. When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out.
Kurt Fuller
#89. Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic.
Jennifer Stone
#90. School is like theater. Teachers are like directors, students are like actors, and classes are like theatrical presentations.
Victor Miller
#91. Restaurants and chefs have become followed by such a broad swath of the public, in a way that used to be reserved for sports stars, movie stars, and theater actors. Restaurants are in the firmament of today's common culture.
Danny Meyer
#92. Film directing has perfected my theater directing. I think when I first started directing, a lot of my stuff was very lateral; I was afraid to have the actors' backs turned away, afraid to put them too far upstage, and I think once I did more things with film, I got more interested in composition.
Adam Rapp
#93. The '80s were a time of technical wonder in filmmaking; unfortunately, some colleges didn't integrate their film and theater departments - so you had actors who were afraid of the camera, and directors who couldn't talk to the actors.
Eric Stoltz
#94. Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.
Al Pacino
#95. Once I went to film school, I realized that film directing was actually much better than theater directing, because you kind of get to stay in control of it all the way through. You don't relinquish the piece to the actors like you have to in theater; you stay in control through the very end.
Mark Waters
#96. Now, when I started my theater, the modus operandi was having the actors stare right into the audience.
Richard Foreman
#97. What I always loved about theater is that that's an experience that a company of actors just sinks itself into for weeks, and you really get to work on the material, and by the time you're in front of an audience, you really own it.
Zeljko Ivanek
#98. Theater is like going to the gym for actors.
Julia Stiles
#99. Film is mostly a visual medium, and so the director has much more control in terms of painting pictures and painting a performance. For theater, the director does everything he can and then says, 'Out you go,' and the actors are in charge of that stage every night.
David Lindsay-Abaire
#100. I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else.
Michael Haneke
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