Ian Mckellen Quotes

My plays are always pushing towards cinema anyway. They're down and dirty, real and more fun.

I always say film is art, theater is life and television is furniture.

With a play, for me, there's no time to sit back on it. You're living on your instincts. And every night there are subtle changes and adjustments, because what's in front of you is a living, breathing audience.

We film in front of a live audience, and I was a theater actor before I got into television, so I like that.

I would love to do a live show with dancers and fashion and scenic elements - definitely bring my love of the theater to a concert-style performance.

People are mistaken to view cinema as some sort of gimmick. It's very much ingrained in the ways in which we understand each other.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

There's nothing like a play. It's so immediate and every performance is different. As an actor, you have the most control over what the audience is seeing.

I think any actor would agree that you can't replace theater. It's immediate. You have the energy of the crowd and every single night it's different.

I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms - painting, photography, music, dance, theater.

Film is an emotional medium; it's not a logical medium. It's not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.

I really feel that acting for film and acting for the stage are two different crafts. I think that they share things in common. But I liken it to a painter switching over to photography. There are similar things - you have to be conscious of light and color and form - but it's a whole different medium.

So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

What's the point of doing a brilliant Hedda Gabler in my back garden if no one will ever see it?

'Endgame' resists narrative and even thematic explanation. How you play it has to reflect this. If you decide something too much in advance, you forget the element that gives the play life - the audience.

The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature.

Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information.

I think cinema has this beautiful component. It's a universal language.

They say that theater is the actor's medium, television is the writer's medium and film is the director's medium, and it's really true.

There's no doubt that some of the greatest films ever made have come from the theater. It's all a matter of finding a way to make the theater experience watchable on film.

Every medium has its advantages and weaknesses and there are many things I can put down on paper that I might not be able to put into film or into a stage performance. In each form, one can communicate powerfully in different ways.

Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.

A seven-minute take is almost like theater.