Jason Robards Quotes

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor.

Being an actor in movies is a lot about the power of your imagination and making the circumstance real to you so the audience will feel that it's real.

It's true what people say - that actors are the closest thing there is to children. They play.

I think chemistry and great acting go hand-in-hand.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

I love doing theater so much - being in front of an audience and seeing how a character grows and develops with every performance.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

What I always loved about theater is that that's an experience that a company of actors just sinks itself into for weeks, and you really get to work on the material, and by the time you're in front of an audience, you really own it.

In theater, you're playing characters. You believe you're somebody else, and you're acting.

An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

As an actor, to go and see those shows - great plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and Clifford Odets's 'Golden Boy' - it's so exhilarating. I'd personally love to perform the role of Jerry in Edward Albee's 'The Zoo Story.' He's a transient, lost soul, and an example of humanity at its rawest.

I think every actor should go back and do theater periodically.

As an actor all we want to do is act and play people.

I don't honestly think people know what acting is.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

I became an actress to provoke people and move people and to tell the stories.

I love acting. It's an interesting challenge to make something that doesn't exist appear like it's happening, and to do it in a real way.

Acting is all about finding the truth within whatever world you're in.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

It's important to listen to the actor who is there on the stage and living it.

I'm someone who started in the theater and really couldn't stand repeating the show. My favorite part of acting is the five or six weeks of rehearsal that you get. I like doing previews; I like the opening week because my friends and family come, and then after that, I don't want to do it anymore.