Quotes About Theater

Initially, I had started doing theater, where the actor has a direct relationship to the audience. So, moving into film and television disconnected me. When you do a film, you start to get the character, and then it disappears for a year before it's released and you get feedback.

Frances McDormand is my favorite actor. I don't know if that's relevant. But she's a person who plays people. In other words, not everything has to be an over-the-top Broadway musical to get my attention, but it certainly helps.

To be able to analyze plays and novels is so relevant to acting.

I like to play the comic relief or parts that aren't necessarily comedic but that I can find the comedy in.

I love playing grotesques, I relish it.

Theater is a wonderful medium - I love theater myself, and there are exceptions to every rule - but the thing that motion pictures can do that theater cannot is that in movies, you don't have to rely on dialogue.

Acting is mathematics for me. I do very little homework and rather rely on my imagination for playing a role.

And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they're going to go and see the story you're in.

Sometimes I wish I had remained in little theater.

The theater remains relevant because of 3D. It makes it an event. You go there, 400 people put on their glasses, and it's just fun.

It remains an incredible struggle for women in theater, and, in particular, playwrights and directors, to get their work seen and to not only get seen, but to get it to Broadway.

I think theater probably remains my favorite, sort of where my soul lives. It takes a lot of discipline, and you have to show up eight shows a week, no matter how you feel physically, mentally, emotionally - there's nobody to cut around that: you've got to tell the story yourself for two hours.

The most remarkable moment is when you go out on the stage and you hear the applause of the audience!

'The Painkiller' is a remarkable play.

Being on film is forever. Television, as well, just lives on and on and on, which is really exciting. But then with theater, it's like an experience. You have to be there that one special night that was like that to see that one performance that was really remarkable. It's more intimate as well. So I like them both.

Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.

I've had a great love for Al Pacino's work since I first saw him on the stage doing 'The Indian Wants the Bronx' in the early '70s. His work is remarkable. He's the real thing.

I remember when I was doing 'The Crucible' on Broadway with Laura Linney, and Arthur Miller had been in rehearsal with us and was on stage on opening night. She turned to me during the curtain call and said, 'Let's make sure we remember this.'

I remember when I made 'A Scanner Darkly,' going, 'I hope people see it in theater - but I think it's going to be seen in someone's room at two in the morning.' It's that kind of movie. And I would have loved if it had been available on multiple formats at the moment it opened.

I remember when I was in 'Matilda,' we would have interviews in the day, and then we'd go to a show, and it's just, like, absolutely insane.

And while there are exceptions, a lot of plays done at the high school level are boring. At least, that's what I remember when I was in high school.

The part I like best was my role in 'Blood and Sand.' If I had died, I would have liked to be remembered as an actor by that role - I think it my greatest.

In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect.

In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action.