Winston Duke Quotes

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

Acting is an aesthetic career, which is annoying.

I'm into parlor dramas. I'm into theatre. I'm trained for the stage. I trained to do Chekhov and Shakespeare, I was trained for the stage.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

Actors on stage, you can go from playing a myriad of roles, from Shakespeare to a Eugene O'Neil drama, and it's the norm. I came up in a world where you're supposed to be able to do three things very well. Act, sing, dance, paint, do something. The emphasis was on versatility.

That's what I've wanted to do my whole life, just act. When I was younger, I loved to entertain people. I always used to make up dance routines, do little plays. I love to perform, basically.

The first drama thing I really got stuck into was 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' I played Puck. That's when I said, 'I want to be an actor.'

I dreamed of being an actress when I was a little kid because you don't know then that the writer writes everything the actor is saying. But as I got older, I got into college and became more aware that writing is another option, and I started getting into it, too.

As a kid I would watch 'SCTV,' 'Saturday Night Live,' 'Monty Python' and 'The Kids in the Hall,' and be amazed that these guys got to be different people every week. It spoke to the acting side in me.

I was the only one silly enough to carry it on to the professional level, but I would say most of my family - and my extended family - are storytellers. And really, that's just what acting is.

I just remember watching my first theater class, and I was like, 'Oh I can get up there,' like I could absolutely get up and do this every day and learn about it.

Even if I don't have a job, I work on plays and scenes.

I did Shakespeare in college and the nerves I got doing Shakespeare are the same nerves I get doing 'Mad Men.'

I think I first got into acting through church. I would go to these church retreats, and they would tell us to make a skit or make a video and present it to the rest of the group. And I started doing that. And I fell in love with it.

I love theatre because it's just me and the audience. It's the litmus test in acting, to be able to sustain a performance over one, two or three hours.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

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

I had a good theater career for years. I played Hamlet when I was 22, and I've played some really great roles.

Yeah, I do get to do some theater occasionally. I don't get to do it as much as I would like to.

Personally speaking there's only so long you can go from film to film to film. There's an inspiration an actor gets from the stage.

I don't pretend to be anything but an actor and a writer.

I think I started out just loving the attention. But that's changed into a real love and passion for my profession. Acting has never lost that challenge and excitement for me.

I fell in love with acting at around the age of 11, when I was drafted in to play a fairy at an amateur production of 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

I'd definitely like to widen my film range. I mean, I'd love to do some theater.