Youth Theatre Quotes

#1. The first time I came to London on my own, I was 15. I was absolutely oblivious to so many things. I had no expectations, no fears. I just came to do a National Youth Theatre season one summer. It was just brilliant.

Gina McKee

#2. I was very fortunate that a teacher saw that I read a lot and got bored very easily and had a lot of energy, so she said, 'You've got to go to this youth theater.' I joined Manchester Youth Theatre when I was really young, and I just loved putting on and being involved in plays and telling stories.

Justin Chadwick

#3. 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

#4. I took up drama and did so much extracurricular work, like the National Youth Theatre and Guildhall's Saturday school. Acting is where I felt most comfortable and how I wanted to express myself.

Douglas Booth

#5. I haven't done any 'Fringe' shows since I was about 17. Then I performed with my youth theatre in a show where we all had this old-fashioned make-up on and giggled through our lines.

Neve McIntosh

#6. 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

#7. I had a very nice, cozy childhood. I did lots of plays at school and worked with the National Youth Theatre as a teenager.

Lucy Punch

#8. I went to the Glasgow Youth Theatre and they just let me in. But I was so shy that I was there for about six weeks without actually introducing myself.

Bill Forsyth

#9. When I was at youth theatre and drama school, I never thought people would mistake me for a stand-up.

Martin Freeman

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. The National Youth Theatre did one very simple but incredible thing for me: it made me realise I had choices.

Gina McKee

#14. I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void.

Sam Claflin

#15. I'd auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and I didn't get a place and it was terrifying.

Matthew Macfadyen

#16. Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country.

Mahatma Gandhi

#17. You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.

Stephen Daldry

#18. When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!'.

Epictetus

#19. I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw

#20. In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.

Arthur Schopenhauer