Great Theatre Quotes

#1. Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

Willem Dafoe

#2. This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

Robertson Davies

#3. I've done great theatre, great films and had a lot of opportunities in television. I also love to sing, and I've been able to do that once or twice in the television shows.

Scott Bakula

#4. Ever since I was little it was programmed into me that London is where great theatre occurs and all the big shows you love start there.

Zach Braff

#5. The great theatre for virtue is conscience.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#6. You can see some very great theatre actors who don't work at all well on screen. They're trying too hard at it.

Kevin Whately

#7. The entire universe is a great theatre of mirrors.

Alice Bailey

#8. 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.

Samuel West

#9. I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city.

Todd English

#10. I grew up overseas in Indonesia, and my school had a great art, music, and theatre program.

Angela Kinsey

#11. It's hard to get people up and out to shows, but 'The Walworth Farce' has masses of energy and will attract a crowd who don't always come to the theatre, which is great.

Domhnall Gleeson

#12. There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both.

Harry Lloyd

#13. There's a great charm in theatre; I enjoyed doing it for twelve years and did lots of plays. At this chapter of my life, I am a cinema actor, and I would like to continue to be so, and at some point I would return to the theatre.

Boman Irani

#14. I'm really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to theatre, and if that child has a great experience at a pantomime they will continue to come year after year.

John Barrowman

#15. I was used to theatre classes. I studied with my mother; she was a theatre teacher and directed, too, so it was very family-like. Then I studied with a great teacher in Paris, and she was wonderful; she pushed me, but she was a warm soul.

Juliette Binoche

#16. Everyone has an opportunity to be great because everyone has an opportunity to serve.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#17. I loved theatre and did magic, too, but I was never the best at it - there was never a teacher saying, 'You're great, you have to make this your career!' I was good at science and math. I figured I'd go into science and become a dentist.

Nathan Fielder

#18. I grew up in a community of theatre, and I always loved musicals. From a young age, the first present I ever wanted was a video camera. For me it was a great outlet to be creative.

Christopher Egan

#19. 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.

Nicolas Roeg

#20. What is so liberating about this whole business is when you see that big movies are going to come out and then you see them up in Malibu in the little triplex theatre a week later and you think, this is show business. This is the great movie career. And it's all funded in the shoe box.

Anthony Hopkins

#21. I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college.

Wesley Snipes

#22. It's really a grand old, legendary theatre where the spirits of like Judy Garland and all these great performers have been. The clubs are way more underground.

Deborah Cox

#23. I got the O.B.E because I represent England outside of England more ... but thinking of me as an actor, I haven't done all the classical theatre, all the great roles. Think of Helen Mirren and me. Helen, who I adore, is a friend - should be Dame. I am the rebel, the revolutionary on the side.

Charlotte Rampling

#24. 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.

Sylvester McCoy

#25. A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Kenneth Tynan

#26. It was in New York, and I've always wanted to film in New York. And the writer was a teenage friend of mine. We did youth theatre together when we were 16 and always had a dream of making a film together. And ten years later, we've done it. So it's great.

Rosamund Pike

#27. I strive for perfection, but of course it can never be perfect. I'm never satisfied at the end of a performance. But the great thing about live theatre is that every night you get another chance to get it right.

Anthony Warlow

#28. When the sun sets beautifully, other beauties rise. Nature is a theatre; when one great player leaves the scene, another great player immediately enters. The play always continues excellently.

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#29. Theatre is great, but we don't live in an idealistic world, and we have to pay our bills.

Randeep Hooda

#30. Places like the National Theatre or Sheffield, these great engines of theatre, make us cutting edge because they can be experimental. They can do plays that nobody else can afford to do in ways nobody else can afford to do.

Toby Stephens

#31. 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.

Deborah Cox

#32. 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.

Liam Neeson

#33. It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential.

Robert Morley

#34. It's great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people.

Phil Daniels

#35. I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress.

Kathleen Turner

#36. 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.

Lusia Strus

#37. I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.

Patrick Macnee

#38. I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas.

Abi Morgan

#39. The great lesson in theatre is that you live the story every night, and that is a wonderful vehicle for getting to the richest places in a performance or investing a character with the richest life.

Celia Weston

#40. The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

Oscar Wilde

#41. Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre.

Israel Horovitz

#42. Doing gigs is great, but when you come together for a production in the theatre, that is something I have a lot of respect for.

Eliza Doolittle

#43. I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from.

James Purefoy

#44. The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.

Kevin Spacey

#45. I'm interested in the spirits of people. In the theatre, there's the acting part of acting - and I'm not saying that can't be great - and there's the essence. To explore that essence, you need a key, a look, a gesture, an insight that unlocks the person's soul.

Ralph Fiennes

#46. You'll never really be great unless you aim high.

Stella Adler

#47. Television is great but for me, as a performer, nothing compares to a live theatre show.

Bruce Forsyth

#48. To be honest I don't think I was any great shakes as a theatre actor because everything I was doing was really small in size - intimate.

Robert Carlyle

#49. 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.

Laurie Holden

#50. I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture.

Andy Serkis

#51. I was lucky enough to see the original cast of 'In the Heights.' This one blew my mind. The infusion of Latin, hip hop and rap with musical theatre, great storytelling and talent was a powerful combination to me during a time when I'd not been moved by much!

Josh Young

#52. I love the instantaneous nature of filming rather than the repetition of working in the theatre, but that maybe because I haven't had great experiences working in the theatre.

Emilia Fox

#53. It's a whole different kind of anxiety. But the great thing about doing a theatre job is that once the ball starts rolling you just have to go with it, it's inexorable.

Emily Watson

#54. Even if the play is great, every day in theatre you have to question everything because the audience is new every day. I love that.

Clotilde Hesme

#55. Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small?

Langston Hughes

#56. Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme.

Emile Hirsch

#57. I get on with actors, and when I'm doing a theatre show, it's great being with them all the time. But we're all alike, and it's much nicer being with people who are different.

Phil Daniels

#58. The theater is a great equalizer: it is the only place where the poor can look down on the rich.

Will Rogers

#59. As we get older ... I don't know a single person who has devoted their life to musical theatre who hasn't had a couple of misses as well as a bunch of hits. The misses, we learn a great deal from them.

Maury Yeston

#60. I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

#61. Sitcoms are like summer stock. You put it up in three days, and then you do it in front of an audience, so it's a really great transition from theatre into camera work.

Susan Egan

#62. When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting.

Steve Buscemi

#63. I had great faith in Irish actors, that they'd be hip to the whole theatre thing, and they are. I had no illusions of coming over here as some kind of big shot. It's been a learning experience for me too.

Christopher Meloni

#64. there is a dense crowd; outside the Betting Rooms it is like a great struggle at a theatre door - in the days of theatres; or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon temple - in the days of Spurgeon. An

Charles Dickens

#65. There is something so great about film and television where you can convey an emotion in
the blink of an eye which you would perhaps not be able to do to the back row of a theatre, like
over 1000 seats, and there is something so subtle and beautiful about that too.

Anna Camp

#66. When football stars disappear, so do the teams, and that is a very curious phenomenon. It is like in the theatre, in a play, where there is a great star. If the star is not well, the whole cast suffers.

Pele

#67. If great lecture is theatre, the future of learning is games.

Anant Agarwal

#68. 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.

David Suchet

#69. People see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

Charles Bukowski

#70. What's great about collaborating is getting to work with wonderful people. That's what theatre is about: other people getting you to give your best, and getting everyone else's best out of them.

Jason Robert Brown

#71. A man had said that to her once at the stage door. She'd been leaving after a theatre session, buzzing still with the high of performance, and he'd stopped her to say how much he'd enjoyed it. "You've a great talent for observation," he'd said. "Ears, eyes, and heart, all at once.

Kate Morton

#72. I'd love to do more theatre and acting. I attended a performing arts high school in London, and it would be great to be able to put all of that training to use again.

Derek Hough

#73. I kind of got lost down a road of TV and film, so it's great to come back to theatre.

Richard C. Armitage

#74. It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.

Don Cheadle