Jonathan Groff Quotes

As an actor, I've grown considerably. It's taken me years to get comfortable doing a romantic scene and dancing on stage in front of a live audience. I've really opened up a lot.

Theatre is for you if you truly want to act and test yourself. There is no room for error as you are performing in front of a live audience.

Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.

I would absolutely recommend for actors to start in the theater because it establishes a foundation in your craft that you can build off of.

The difference between working with actors that have put their time in the theater and just straight film and television actors is that you trust theater actors a lot more. You know that they're seriously more trained than anyone else because theater is the best place to grow as an actor.

You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera.

In England, when we're at drama school, we spend a lot of time learning the craft from playwrights and stage actors, who are very well trained in the basics of acting because they need to get it right the first time - you can't have second or third takes when you're in front of a live audience, unlike in film.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

If you're not doing something right, you can feel it on stage, and if it isn't going well, the audience will tell you. A teacher can teach you sense memory and this and that, but until you get in front of an audience, you don't really feel it.

Theater is such its own living, breathing animal. You do a show every night, but it's different every night. Being on stage, you're experiencing a journey.

It's important for an actor to feel like they're really being watched and to receive feedback and encouragement about the aspects of what they're doing that feels truthful - and also to raise awareness when they might be resorting to habits and tricks, which every actor has.

In theatre there is a certain discipline that you have to follow, and you have to be experienced to be performing in front of a live audience. It is satisfying to me.

Theatre gives you an altogether different kind of thrill which every actor who wants to grow must try.

It takes me some time to get into what I am doing - since I am not a trained actor, I don't have that skill. I have to think of what I am doing and how it comes through.

It is important for an actor to learn how to face a live audience.

You do some acting in a room for a few minutes, hopefully get something out of it that makes you a bit better at acting, and go home. Maybe the people in the room with you liked the acting you did. Maybe they didn't! Either way, it's not the end of the world; you'll be doing this again soon.

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.

A live audience with live reactions feeds a different sort of acting that will then inform your film work, and vice versa.

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.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

Backstage life is terrific training for an actor, seeing shows from the wings.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.

I don't know, on a sitcom, and in theatre especially, you have to really be listening to an audience. And if you're losing them, you can hear the sniffs, and the playbills shuffling and whatnot.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.

I wouldn't be the same actor if I couldn't do theater.