Think Theatre Quotes

#1. I think theatre helped, only because it was acting experience. I got to work with a lot of directors.

James Denton

#2. I think theatre is a democratic act and I think writing a play is not a democratic act. I think we should give writers more leeway and space to write the thing they want to write, and then we should produce the play, multiple times, and let them re-write it.

Sarah Ruhl

#3. I don't think theatre has changed; it's society that has changed.

Lee Hall

#4. 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.

Eddie Redmayne

#5. I definitely think that theatre is something I'll keep coming back to in my career for as long as I can. I also think theatre's something you have to be very fit to do. I am fairly fit, but I don't think I could do it all the time.

Daniel Radcliffe

#6. I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

Vaclav Havel

#7. But I think theatre in a repressive society is an immensely exciting event and theatre in a luxurious old, affluent old society like ours is an entertaining event.

Janet Suzman

#8. 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

#9. In the end I think theatre has only one subject: justice.

Edward Bond

#10. I think theatre to some extent is always about telling stories, isn't it, and I think what I've learned is that freedom comes when you tell your story; freedom comes when you tell the truth.

Eve Ensler

#11. I think theatre at its best looks into the dark corners; clearly, my dark corners are full of doom.

Laura Wade

#12. I like going to New York. I like the galleries and the theatre and the restaurants and bars and music. I think that city is more alive than Los Angeles.

Sara Gilbert

#13. People in America, they're getting dumber, they're getting less able to analyze something and think critically, and pick apart the underlying elements. And more and more ready to make a snap judgment regarding something at face value, which is too bad.

William Missouri Downs

#14. I think it is so much more fun to discover film in the movie theatre when there is so much anticipation about the movie.

Anne Hathaway

#15. I have always been very fond of them (drama critics) ... I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it.

Noel Coward

#16. People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually.

David Wenham

#17. 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.

Michael Moore

#18. I was always very independent and looked out for myself. I think that ability really helped me in later years both in sports and in theatre.

Jack Wagner

#19. 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

#20. I think the same way about theatre, you go out there and you are creating a world for a moment that can actually have a real impact on people, present some kind of story that gives you something to think about when you walk away, feeling enriched - if it works out well.

Jeffrey Jones

#21. 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.

Donald Pleasence

#22. I think the people who probably have it the best are the people on cable like on 'Entourage', 'the Sopranos', etc. who have 13 episodes per season and breaks to do films and theatre. I think that's the most ideal life.

T. J. Thyne

#23. In comedy you feel you need to go back to the theatre every now and again, you feel you need to go back to an audience every now and again to see if you're still getting your craft right, making people laugh at the moments you think they should and that sort of thing.

Mathew Baynton

#24. The commercial and subsidised theatre are intrinsically linked. I wouldn't have had the career I have had without the opportunities I had through the subsidised sector. However, I do think, in any walk of life, subsidy for the sake of subsidy is not always healthy.

Cameron Mackintosh

#25. The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action!

Augusto Boal

#26. 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

#27. I guess I think of a musical as something in which the music is sort of like the engine of the piece - whether it is in the theatre or in film.

John Kander

#28. I hate that people think going to the theatre is a special occasion. I wish people would treat it as normally as going to the cinema.

Brenda Blethyn

#29. I honed my passion for acting in theatre and education, and I think it's important not to belittle the child audience.

Rhys Ifans

#30. When someone goes to watch my film in the theatre, they won't remember the last four articles they read about me. Instead, they will think about the last film I did.

Anushka Sharma

#31. 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.

John Lahr

#32. I think there is no world without theatre.

Edward Bond

#33. I sometimes think that theatre is a torture.

Juliet Stevenson

#34. I think you're peripatetic when you work in this industry. My husband and I are assuming the role of co-artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. But as long as the film industry will have me, I will have it.

Cate Blanchett

#35. I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky.

Alan Bennett

#36. I think for me, the imaginary world was always exciting. I started in New York doing theatre, from having just one person in an audience to performing for a full house. I think I've always enjoyed playing different characters, blending into different environments and such.

Dilshad Vadsaria

#37. I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value.

Vivien Leigh

#38. You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides.

Jay Maisel

#39. 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

#40. What was good was that I had friends who were actors and in theatre who were really good, because I think my strengths were visual, like pictorial.

Rob Urbinati

#41. 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

#42. I would like to do theatre because it scares me, and I think you should do things that scare you.

Rob James-Collier

#43. I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world.

Elliot Cowan

#44. 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.

Stephen Daldry

#45. I believe if you go to a movie theatre, and you see something you think is incredible, if you walk out of the theatre and there was a bin in the lobby of DVDs of the film you just watched, you would buy four of them - one for you and three for your friends.

Kevin Spacey

#46. 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.

Wayne McGregor

#47. You think, you don't just speak. The lines come off the thoughts.

Jeremy Irons

#48. I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don't go.

Uta Hagen

#49. I have always added dance to my productions. When I was directing theatre, I added dance sequences where they didn't exist in the play. I think dance is the ultimate form of expression.

Valerie Weiss

#50. The people on the business side in the music business are kind of different from the theatre business. I think it's partly because there are different pressures on the industries.

Tim Curry

#51. The idea of making audiences feel like they matter, that the theatre matters, and that they're a partner in the event - that's what fuels me as a director ... I believe it's actually radical to think about the audience.

Diane Paulus

#52. Well the least favourite question is the one that one's asked particularly about in Japan is what's the difference between theatre and cinema and I think, well, that's about eighty bucks.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

#53. 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

#54. People that went to art house theatre have more options, I used to go, but now think any movie can be delivered in a red envelope three months after it's released so why not watch it on my flat screen in the comfort of home.

Edward Burns

#55. The way the world is, I think a silly evening in the theatre is a good thing, to take our minds off terror.

Tim Curry

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. I think the paparazzi is a necessary evil ... and if ya don't like it, and ya don't want to do this, go to Iowa and do some community theatre. It's all about self-promotion, and it's not always the fun part of it.

Gail O'Grady

#59. I tried to get into the National Youth Theatre and didn't, and I tried to get into drama school and didn't, and then I went to university and was really delighted that I went there. I think having the word 'no' can be quite creative.

Tamsin Greig

#60. I was five when I did my first show with the Mountain Play Theatre company in Marin County. I started young, and since no one in my family was involved in the industry in any way shape or form, I think everyone thought I'd do a few plays and that would be it. But then I kept doing it.

Claire Coffee

#61. 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.

Kenneth Cranham

#62. I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.

Kelly McGillis

#63. I think theatres will always remain a sacred place where people go for something live and experience things live, which is very different than the experience of film.

Susan Stroman

#64. 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.

Penelope Keith

#65. I was convinced that acting was for fools. I was on the stage when I was eight with my father, he was playing one of those Greek blind guys that sees things and warns people, whilst I was in a blue skirt. I think there were 5,000 people in the theatre, it was ridiculous.

Rutger Hauer

#66. I think American Ballet Theatre is setting that standard now for classical ballet, that you can dream big, and it doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, what your background is.

Misty Copeland

#67. I suppose I became in danger of overexposure, which is why, I think, doing theatre for a year is quite a sensible move - just to remember what it's all about, really.

Tom Goodman-Hill

#68. Every time I make, I've made a piece of work, I've wanted to get rid of it, obliterate it and do the next thing, because it was never quite what I wanted. I think the moment you think you've arrived is the moment that you should stop.

Simon McBurney

#69. I sometimes think the theatre is more demanding because it requires things you don't have in films, like it requires you to make the people in the front row believe you and not look an idiot to them while the people right at the back can hear you.

Michael Gambon

#70. 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.

John Baldacci

#71. When I saw 'Hercules,' my mind just exploded because I was extremely thin; I was insecure. I literally ran out of the theatre and started lifting things, anything I could think of - milk crates. I'm still lifting things. It changed my life.

Sylvester Stallone

#72. I think the only directing I'd be any good at is theatre directing. It's the only thing I can see myself doing.

Martin Freeman

#73. A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.

Soren Kierkegaard

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

Willem Dafoe

#75. There wasn't anyone in my family who was involved in the theatre. I saw a few amateur plays when I was growing up, but I can't think of anything that happened or anybody in particular who inspired me; it all came from within.

Garry Hynes

#76. I think about entrance and exits. I think about dialogue. But most of all I think about voice - all character development in theatre is done through voice. And as I wrote my debut novel "The Big Fear", I thought about narrative voice with every line.

Andrew Case

#77. There is a trend in the whole [U.S.] culture toward making things shorter. People have been watching too much television, and they have a television mentality. I think people really are wary of sitting in a theatre too long. They're not used to it.

Rocco Landesman

#78. In many ways, theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall - that when the play is finished, it's done - but now I realise it's more like gardening; you plant the thing, then you have to constantly tend it. You're part of a thing that's living.

Lee Hall

#79. I'd love to think that people in the future would gather in theatres, at conventions, and in darkened rooms, and read it out to each other.

Neil Gaiman

#80. This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.

Robertson Davies

#81. 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

#82. I think I want to pursue a movie career and maybe even pursue some theatre.

Katie Holmes

#83. Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut.

Charles Laughton

#84. 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

#85. I would hate to think of the theatre world without critics. Without them, we'd not have the record of each season.

Marian Seldes

#86. I did some theatre. I had some smaller roles in a couple TV shows and films. I used to think I did a lot of acting, but my 'career' started when I started 'Homeland'.

Morgan Saylor

#87. What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

Pete Townshend

#88. I think a lot of people think that we [comedians] are nerveless people in the theatre, that we don't feel that kind of terror which traditionally anyone who has to do any public speaking feels. It's worse for actors, because our livelihood depends on it.

Barry Humphries

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.

Mignon McLaughlin

#92. In a regular theatre, you'd be kind of moving your eye from one character 5 feet over to the right on the cut. In IMAX, suddenly that's like 20 feet. So I would love to do something. I think I would really want to take the massive screen into consideration so that it would be done properly.

Pete Docter

#93. 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.

Miranda Richardson

#94. American theatre, to me, represents zeroing down on what the need is to get inside the personal hearts of people. I think it's really beautiful if we can keep doing that instead of just fluffing everything up and hiding again.

Kelli O'Hara

#95. I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.

Ismail Kadare

#96. I think film likes me better than the theatre does for some reason.

Miranda Otto

#97. Wyndham's is a beautiful old theatre. The sensation on the stage isn't as different as you might think from the Royal Court.

Sophie Thompson

#98. I think that music is crucially important in Shakespeare - and, clearly, was an important part of the Elizabethan theatre. And, it's always been something that was a profound element of the experience of Shakespeare that I have been drawn to - and interpreters have, as well.

Kenneth Branagh

#99. I like working in theatre now and I think that once you've done a certain amount of films most actors love working in the theatre because of the camaraderie.

Francesca Annis

#100. I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.

Bill Nighy