Quotes About Theater

I had worked for ten years in theater; I had worked at Second City in Chicago. Then I got to Hollywood, and I was like, naively, 'Where's my pilot?'

Broadway is so defeating for the most part that it doesn't encourage people to be as tenacious as they should be.

A lot of people tend to chew up the scenery. I'm a firm believer in less is more, especially on the big screen.

I feel very privileged working with other actors. Actors tend to be the best company I know.

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.

People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.

I said to Tennessee, this thing is becoming the Marlon Brando show.

I know from my experience in theater that the crowd is different every night; the reactions, the tension. But it's true for film as well, going from country to country and culture to culture. The difference between California and New York responses, for example. It's really fascinating.

I started out in pre-law. I was going to go to law school. And I saw a production of 'Tally's Folly' that spring term. I took a theater class that term and auditioned for 'Harvey' at the end of the summer, and I was in a play every semester after that.

I'm terrible at learning lines.

When you are doing pantomime, you're not immersing yourself in anything terribly deep.

I would be terribly disappointed if anything would get in the way of my being cast in something, or if performances were canceled. It was a fix that I obviously needed.

I was terribly shy and never said anything in class. Then I started getting into school plays. When you've got words to say, you've got a sort of armour.

So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.

I was terrified of being on stage, and I had to work very hard at a craft to get past that.

I was once so terrified of acting that I used to pretend I was ill to get out of drama.

Theater has always been terrifying to me.

I've always wanted to give 'Hamlet' a shot. It's the big one, you know. I haven't done Shakespeare professionally, so I think it would be terrifying.

'Dogfight' was everything wonderful and terrifying about a show, and I feel it 1,000% gave me the knowledge and the confidence that I could do this. I can step up and be present enough to command scenes with amazing actors.

I feel no terror when I'm acting. There's no tension. It's just a part.

To be an actress and act crazy is really fun for me, to be able to be acting like you'd never be able to act in your real life and scream and freak out. It's an interesting test for an actor.

Launching a Broadway show is like no other endeavor. It's taxing because you're present - it's not like cutting a movie and test focus-grouping it and filling out forms.

I was introduced to theater by a teacher that found me when I was in elementary school. She tested me for the Gifted and Talented program, started taking me to see the 'Nutcracker Ballet.' I got involved.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.