Quotes About Theatre

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.

I was doing a show at the National Youth Theatre, playing an old man. Before that I had played fat clowns and I thought, 'If I want to have the career I would like, I am going to have to lose weight.' I was just starting drama school, and found I was moving around a lot. I also started to eat sensibly. The weight just dropped off.

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

I only went along to youth theatre with a friend when I was young to try to make myself a bit more sociable. But the whole thing was quite sore; it really hurt me trying to get into drama school. It was a world I knew nothing about - it was very middle class; all that usual stuff. But I was young, determined, and I just went for it.

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.

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.

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

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

I went through a low phase for two years when I had a string of flops. At that time, I even felt that I was in the wrong profession and that I should leave acting. But thankfully, I utilised that time to introspect and went on a self-exploration trip. I did theatre in between, and it helped grow the fire within me.

My first Broadway show wasn't until I was a freshman in high school. It was my first trip to New York. I came with a group of theatre kids, and we saw four shows. The very first one was 'Contact.'

I feel that David took a risk with me. I have a sense that by starting off in the theatre and going off to do films you are seen to sell out in some way. I don't hold truck with that, but you can't stop people from feeling it.

My parents were brought up in families which believed theatre people weren't to be trusted. But they were nice people.

'Sizwe' is the beginning of protest theatre; 'Nothing But The Truth' is post-apartheid South Africa.

The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.

Theatre is liberating because it only works if it's truthful - that's what it requires. That's not true of film: the camera does lie.

I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture.

When I used to do musical theatre, my dad refused to come backstage. He never wanted to see the props up close or the sets up close. He didn't want to see the magic.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into the theatre, I am really very shy.

Theatre has so many competitors, it's no longer enough to see and hear a play. You want to be able to touch and smell it, too.

I'd quite like to do a film but I'd also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It's harder for women because there aren't as many challenging roles.

Film is where I want to end up, but I don't want to let go of theatre.

I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.

You can't take a play someone has directed and do whatever you want with it.

Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single "I" or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.