Quotes About Persistence

Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get.

I imagine I was supposed to become a lawyer or something. But this was the Depression; the lawyers I saw were all driving cabs. So I thought, 'Well, if I'm going to be badly off anyway, I might as well be badly off in the theater, where you get used to it.'

I announced at the dinner table when I was 11 that I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But my goal changed to musical theater after the choreographer Robert Joffrey saw me perform while I was on scholarship at the San Francisco Ballet School.

You just have to stick to it beyond all reason and all sanity; you just keep at it. You have to believe that you've got to be in the theater.

I started out doing theater and a soap in New York and that's... sort of what I got stuck in. I was blessed enough to have long runs, and it's sort of hard sometimes then to get out.

When I doing dinner theater in high school, I was talking to a woman who had been in the business for a while and I said I want to act, that's all I want to do with my life and she said if you're serious then you need to hone every discipline you can.

I was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else.

I just like the continue doing what I've been doing. A melange of funny, straight drama, television, movies, a little theater here and there wouldn't hurt. So if I can keep doing that, I'll be a very happy person.

When I left Cambridge, I applied to regional repertory theaters in the U.K. and got accepted by one of them... And here I am, still at it.

When I made a breakthrough as an actor, people started to say, 'Who's that bloke with the funny name?' They advised me to change it, saying it would never be put up in lights outside theaters because they couldn't afford the electricity. But I would never contemplate changing it. It's who I am.

If I listen to 120 stories, I'd love 10 of them, seven would go on floors, four would get completed, three films will have the first copy ready, and one will release in theaters. This is how it has been for me.

I have always worked consistently, even in small ways and even in smaller theaters where I'll do One Acts or something.

I've been doing stand-up since I was 19. There have been times I've had to step away because of my schedule, but now I'm able to go out and do theaters and not smoky little bars.

My dream really is just to keep working in film and in theatre.

I did loads of student films and fringe theatre. I worked for free a lot.

I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.

I hope to continue working in film, television and theatre.

I've been told if you're an actress you can't sing, if you're a dancer you can't act, you can't do theatre and be respected if you've done a TV soap, you can't have a No. 1 record. All these different things they've told me I can't do, but I wanted to do them, so I've done them.

In the whole course of our work at the theatre we have been, I may say, drenched with advice by friendly people who for years gave us the reasons why we did not succeed... All their advice, or at least some of it, might have been good if we had wanted to make money, to make a common place of amusement.

I hope to be still acting when I'm 70 on TV, film and theatre.

I fell into the theatre because I felt I was doing it well, and I stuck to it for the same reason.

Between parts I was too old for and roles that were too overwhelming, out of reach then for my voice. I carved out a niche with the Wagnerian repertoire since I am attracted by its theatrical intensity.

When you study, as I did, every theatrical beginning in this country, none of them have been greeted well. The Royal Shakespeare Company was a disaster, Peter Hall was a disaster, Richard Eyre was a disaster, Trevor Nunn was always a disaster.

Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.