Herbert Beerbohm Tree Quotes

Plays have to be made, and we have to find a way to make them. All of us.

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

I think loads of people see acting, when they're kids, as these magical stories that just happen within the context of the film or the play or the cartoon or whatever they're seeing. They don't imagine that there are actually people that go and do that for a living.

In the theater you rehearse for a minimum of five to six weeks. And then you get to play it. Which means you get to get better. That's the great thing about the theater.

Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.

All the world's a stage.

You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?

I would tell any actress that the trick is to play all the female characters on your show, and then all the men are yours.

I've always said I prefer theater, but there's only ever been one play that I really loved doing, and that was The Seagull.

I always fancied myself more of an actor than a comedian before I realized that only assholes make that kind of distinction.

I have some friends who are actors. I've watched them work. And I would say that of all the arts, acting is the most grueling, thankless. Never apologize for your work.

In the story, I think as an actor you're just trying to fit into the world.

I opened the show with this line: "I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that's tomorrow night.

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

Mine is an actor's voice, not a singer's voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.

It's actually easier to play a leading role than it is to play a supporting role.

We play different people - our art form is performance art - so unless you're playing the same type of person, I don't know if you could improve or make it worse.

Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?

I love theatre - it's where I started - and I've directed a play myself. I'm not sure if I want to direct a film, but certainly, as an actress, I'm always thinking, 'Surely this must be my last film.'

A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.

It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.

I'd like to continue to play until I drop dead on stage or something.

Just concentrate on the performers. Make sure you get the performers, and that's it. That's all we need to do." And I was thinking, "Well what if you do both? Of course the performance is important, the writing is really important. But what if you could have the perfect marriage of making it look really slick as well?" I think that's kind of what I tried to develop as a style, and Spaced was the first TV show I did where all the elements came together.

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing with it.