Top 92 Theatre Actor Quotes
#1. I studied at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano; I was a theatre actor.
Franco Nero
#2. I am a theatre actor, but the last ten years I've taken parts in movies because it keeps me in money.
Michael Gambon
#3. I had to spend a few years learning how to do movies. I wasn't really good at that. I was a theatre actor first and foremost. So I took my time learning that.
Lars Mikkelsen
#5. It's a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you've been trained as a classical theatre actor. There's always a depression in the theatre.
Frances McDormand
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#9. Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.
Christopher Walken
#10. When you're an actor and you walk into a theatre where your movie is playing, you're kinda proud. "Look at my skill!"
James Hetfield
#11. There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead.
Robert Edmond Jones
#12. 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.
Alfred Molina
#13. Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It's harder.
Ben Kingsley
#14. The theatre is a machine of transformations: everything is transformed into another thing; a bald man has thick hair on his head; a man with strong legs gains a limp and a sharp-eyed person becomes blind; an actor who is an atheist immediately turns into the most pious priest on earth! ~
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#15. I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium.
Christopher Eccleston
#16. As an actor, variety is the spice of life. I love theatre ... it's what I enjoy the most. But a bit of TV, a bit of film, a bit of stage - what more could you ask for?
Max Irons
#17. 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.
Jonas Armstrong
#18. I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself.
Tony Shalhoub
#19. A good actor makes clear the meaning of the words. A better actor gives also the emotion of the part. The best actor adds emotion of which the character is unconscious.
Clare Eames
#20. Even though momentarily I thought about being a doctor, I was always involved in theatre and did a drama degree. I just didn't have the guts to go, 'Yes, I'm going to be an actor,' until I was probably 21.
Elliot Cowan
#21. The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.
Stella Adler
#22. I suppose as an actor you become very sensitive to rhythm, not just rhythm as you look at it sort of from the, from the outside as a director might see it, but within yourself you become used to the idea of hearing your fellow actors, responding to them in space.
Simon McBurney
#23. My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.
William Kempe
#25. I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'
Simon McBurney
#26. Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity.
William Petersen
#27. My father was an actor, and we have the most important theatre company in Montreal.
Gilles Duceppe
#28. I've been an actor for 14 years now and a lot of that time was spent in theatre and television. Then I moved to L.A. to try and build upon that and it's starting to pay off!
David Oyelowo
#29. My advice to young actors is probably to do some theatre; definitely do that. I keep running into these actors who have never been on stage, and it's invaluable for an actor. What you will learn about yourself is huge.
Yul Vazquez
#30. In comedy, beware the split focus. The audience should focus on the face of the actor. The audience must see the setup. If there is action elsewhere on the stage, the comic line can be lost.
James Carver
#31. A perfect weekend in London has to start on Friday night, by going to the theatre, the Donmar or the National. It's a cliche for an actor, but I enjoy going as much as possible.
Helen McCrory
#32. In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.
Ian McKellen
#33. My introduction to acting was through theatre, so I actually saw a couple of Broadway shows that made me want to be an actor.
Skylar Astin
#34. 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.
Mark Rylance
#35. There are ways in which you can make sure that even if people come to the theatre because they know an actor or actress, by the end, they've forgotten that, and they leave going, 'Wow - what an amazing play.'
Kevin Spacey
#36. I don't even think places like the National Youth Theatre (NYT) are necessarily about wanting to be an actor when you grow up. They're about meeting people from different backgrounds and different religions and different cultures, and mixing with people that you wouldn't ordinarily meet.
Ashley Jensen
#37. My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.
Orson Scott Card
#38. A fool cannot be an actor, though an actor may act a fool's part.
Sophocles
#39. In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me.
Anne-Marie Duff
#40. 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.
Christopher Eccleston
#41. In the theatre, the actor is given immediate feedback.
Charles Keating
#42. Yes, it is a rehearsed show, yes, it was analogy of going to see a play at the theatre, where everything has to be in place and whole things, everything being works, all works together to get the best effect you know it's more like an actor learning a part.
John Deacon
#43. Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively.
Stella Adler
#44. The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor.
Paul Scofield
#45. I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for.
Michael Caine
#46. AESTHETICS OF AVANT-GARDE THEATRE
Make the stage an actor
Make an actor the stage.
Kenneth Koch
#47. I think it's good for an actor to bounce between stuff on camera and stuff in theatre. If I could do half and half every year I would be a very, very happy man.
Richard Madden
#48. It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential.
Robert Morley
#49. I always admired Hugh Jackman as an actor in movies but also in theatre because I'm a big fan of Broadway musicals.
Tao Okamoto
#50. I saw Waiting for Godot when I was 17 in rep with a then unknown actor called Peter O'Toole playing Vladimir. I remember leaving the theatre promising myself that one day I would have a go at this play and then pretty much forgot it for 50 years.
Patrick Stewart
#51. As an actor, particularly in theatre, you're trying to get jobs on TV; but you're also losing jobs in theatre to people who are on television.
Andrew Rannells
#52. After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school.
Chris Parnell
#53. There's something about doing theatre in London - it sinks a little bit deeper into your soul as an actor. It's something about the tradition of theatre, about performing on the West End stage.
Christian Slater
#54. Normally when people ask me what I do I say I'm an actor, and that's what I always wanted to be and that's the way I approach work even when I'm directing it.
Simon McBurney
#55. No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good.
Stella Adler
#56. 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
#57. Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and should be centered on acting in plays rather than just exercises, improvisations, monologues, or even scenes.
Richard Hornby
#58. 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.
Vikram Rohit Shetty
#59. 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.
Colm Meaney
#60. What I do is interpret, not create. I may add elements and do something different. That is what is so incredible about theatre. Why do we love it that there are nine Hamletsor six King Lears over two years? We love to watch a different actor attack the same material.
Kevin Spacey
#61. The society girl meets more dangers than the girl on the stage. There is more danger at a tango tea than in the theatre. The actor is less dangerous than the dancing master.
Lillian Russell
#62. With theatre, we all agree to suspend our disbelief about so many things, but not about race. It's totally OK to have one actor playing five roles - people are willing to believe that. But they won't believe it if there's a black or an Asian kid who has white parents. What does that say about us?
David Henry Hwang
#63. I went to school, majored in theatre, and said 'Mom, I have to choose my own destiny. I want to be an actor.' A couple of weeks after I graduated college I called my mother up and said 'Can I borrow $200?' and she said 'Why don't you act like you've got $200.'
Arsenio Hall
#64. My working history as an actor is definitely in the theatre; it certainly was in Australia.
Yael Stone
#65. Theatre has been a part of my life since before I can remember - my dad is also an actor and a director and a storyteller who lives and works in the Twin Cities; my mom is a nurse practitioner, but she also grew up doing theatre - so, it has always been a part of my experience.
Seth Numrich
#66. I've never done stand-up; I came via small-scale touring theatre, through the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, then I got employed on that as an actor who had a humorous sensibility.
Mark Williams
#67. 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.
Jean Reno
#68. I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor.
Anupam Kher
#69. The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience.
Sir Arthur Sullivan
#70. I want everyone to feel as much as possible as if they inhabit the same space. They more fluid the relationship between actor and audience, the better.
Christine Jones
#71. Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene.
Tom Riley
#72. Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.
Clint Eastwood
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. Feelings are universal, and if an actor's doing his job, I think he's making people sit there, and if it's in a movie or a theatre, going 'Hmm, yeah, I know that ... I know that.'
Jeffrey Combs
#76. I went to Princeton High School, when I was very serious about being an artist. I was in a theatre family but I didn't want to become an actor.
John Lithgow
#77. An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote. A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills.
Mark Leslie
#78. My real training as an actor was when I started doing theatre.
Steve Buscemi
#79. An actor knows two important things - to be honest in what he is doing and to be in touch with the audience. That's not bad advice for a politician either.
Ronald Reagan
#80. An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham.
Oscar Wilde
#81. As in a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next.
William Shakespeare
#82. The theatre has built a whole art round the actor, based on the man and his double - the actor and his character.
Jean-Louis Barrault
#83. All actors know that the real adrenaline rush is in doing theatre. There is an immediate connect, and a role in a play, for an actor, is the biggest temptation.
Lillete Dubey
#84. The theatre demanded of its members stamina, good digestion, the ability to adjust, and a strong sense of humor. There was no discomfort an actor didn't learn to endure. To survive, we had to be horses and we were.
Helen Hayes
#85. As a working actor, all I want to do is work. That's it. It's terrifying when you don't work. It's very hard when you don't work. There have been times when I've been out of work for like six months. I feel theatre to me is like manna.
Sandra Oh
#86. Inside I never said I wanted to do theatre or be an actor.
Sebastian Bach
#88. I'm convinced that theatre is a horrible business. Make this the headline. You have to be on the spot every night as an actor. You are damn lonesome standing out there.
Walter D. Asmus
#89. I always remember is that no matter how good I might be in a movie, I'll never be any better. It's frozen. But in theatre I can be better tomorrow night, I can be better the night after that and I can be better in a week. The journey you go through as an actor is incredible.
Kevin Spacey
#90. A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.
Eric Bentley
#91. Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
Ian McKellen
#92. An actor must never be afraid to make a fool of himself.
Harvey Cocks
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