Nina Arianda Quotes

Movies have takes. But plays are like life - you don't really get takes.

I have so much respect for people in the theater. You can't do 10 or 15 takes. It's all live. It's like life in motion.

From the time that I was in high school, my life really revolved around live theater, so it almost feels genetic.

I come from straight theater.

There's always something more to be accomplished with a character. Theater is a human experience. There's nothing shellacked or finished off about it. I guess that's why it always draws me back.

I love being on stage. I went into theater at five. I realized I really had something here.

I really am a theater person. That means you put something out there, and you let it go. Tomorrow night is a new performance.

So I find the fascination, the love, the incredible skill and everything to do with acting, writing plays, and doing them, just darling. Lovely. I love actors.

As a film actor, you don't often get that opportunity to meet with your audience and take your applause on stage.

It's a real leveller, you know, to do theatre at least once every two years.

I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A.

I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory.

Acting is not about knowing all this stuff; it's about character.

I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy.

I started performing at school and drama classes when I was 7.

I get to play a lot of hysterics.

I love doing movies but I loved doing theatre just as much.

I want to do theatre. I love theatre.

Class clowns become actors.

I did a lot of theater in the South side of Chicago.

I played comedies and dramas.

I like drama. I love being in a drama where I get to be the funny guy. That's what I really love the most.

I was 10, and I played Jim Hawkins in 'Treasure Island' at school, and this great Liverpudlian actor called Andrew Schofield - he was Johnny Rotten in 'Sid And Nancy' - came to watch it, and he had a word with my mum and dad afterwards and told them I should have a go at the Everyman youth theatre. I've never looked back.

I started getting on my feet and clowning around, and they ended up putting me in a play when I was 12. And I was hooked.

I used to go with my parents and loved it, I was in school plays, and I started reading plays before I started reading novels. I'll defend it to the hilt. When theatre is good it is fabulous.