Quotes About Theatre

My mum put me into the Sylvia Young Theatre School aged four, and I'd go there at weekends.

Theatre is all about the process and the sense of community that is created. You have weeks of rehearsal, time to explore your character and get to know the other actors. There is opportunity to try off-the-wall ideas, to find layers and nuance over weeks. You become like a second family with your cast.

I had my appendix removed in my 20s. I was in the middle of a play with Helen Mirren at the Royal Court Theatre, a fabulous career break. Then two weeks in I began suffering the most horrendous pain and had to pull out. Sadly, by the time I'd recovered, the show's run had ended.

It is hard to get good actors who also do television, ads and films. Theatre requires six weeks of rehearsal for a play.

Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.

I temporarily became a surgeon for 'Memory of Love'. I spent two weeks in an operating theatre, watching amputations, and I loved it.

You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait... It felt weird to me. But it's interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people there.

All of a sudden Kevin told me that the movie got bought and was gonna be shown in a movie theatre. I was shocked. I was psyched. It was just weird.

My voice triggers people into recognising me, often at the weirdest times. If I'm in the theatre and talking while in line to go to the loo, the rest of the queue will turn around and say, 'Wait a minute. It's you.'

I do not welcome advice from actors; they are here to act.

I have learned a great deal from the theatrical side of Covent Garden. The Paris Opera Ballet is more concerned with technique. It's perfect. It's beautiful. It's well done. But it lacks the theatrical tradition that is so important in England. At the Royal Ballet, absolutely everyone on stage seems to be caught up in the plot.

I prefer theatre but TV keeps you well known.

To all the younglings I come across in 'Game of Thrones' who suddenly find themselves well known, I say the theatre is your best friend - they will remember you.

And whether or not you're interested in opera or classical music or folk music or the theatre, I think that for a nation's health and well-being it's very important that the arts scene is supported.

The Welsh are all actors. It's only the bad ones who become professional.

Luckily, West End audiences seem to rather like very old people.

Musical theatre is something that I always wanted to be a part of, and my first ever role on the West End as Joseph in 'Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat' gave me a taste for it.

I signed up for the musical Tommy in the West End, where I met my husband.

There's something about doing theatre in London - it sinks a little bit deeper into your soul as an actor. It's something about the tradition of theatre, about performing on the West End stage.

I quite enjoy fame, especially when you go to conventions in America where they treat you like a god with stretch limos and the whole fame thing, but then when you come back to Britain, you end up changing in a toilet in a theatre off West End and that's really good, because that is what it's about.

I first came to London as a musician, and when my group broke up, I did 'Guys and Dolls' at the Watford Palace theatre. After that, Ned Sherrin found me and brought me to the West End to do one of his shows. The work went from strength to strength, so I thought: 'This is where the world wants me; I'll stay.'

I'm not sure I approve of theatre as a university course. I think theatre's something you do. I mean, literature is a subject; theatre is practical.

After a certain point of time, life's practicality hits you. So I got into theatre, did stage plays and worked along with Naseeruddin Shah and Nana Patekar, people who are committed to the craft part.

If you are a musician, you practise your instrument every day, but actors can't be on a set every day. Theatre is a way for me to keep practising my art form.