Kiri Te Kanawa Quotes

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

As long as I don't go onstage completely normal and then jump into character onstage, I assume that most fans would be able to accept me as the creator. I can comment on the work the same way a director would on his movie.

As an actor, you try to put a little bit of yourself in everything you do.

When people give you a writing assignment, they're asking what you think. That's the very opposite of being an actor. When you're an actor, no one wants to hear what you think.

I really enjoy singing, it's entirely different to acting because I'm just being myself.

When I am on the opera stage, I am playing someone else. In recitals, I even have the chance to talk to the audience, which is something you don't get to do in opera.

My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.

In reality, for me every role is completely different.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

The most fun you can possibly have as an actor is to walk that line between what's real and what's interesting.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

I still love finding the soul of the characters I play and defining who they are. This to me is my paint set, and the colors are always exciting to choose.

With every character, I just bring something that I can make my own.

You know to me, being a good actor, the most important quality is you've got to love to play, and to just be open to anything.

Musical theater is great; you get painted up, you get to play princesses and witches, and you sing. The joy alone of that can really carry a lot.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

I think I was 8 or 9 when I did my first play. It was at a community level, but that's when I knew that this is what I loved doing.

There is a large element of me in every role I do.

An actor cannot be a censor. I'm there to interpret.

Actors take risks all the time. We put ourselves on the line. It is creative to be able to interpret someone's words and breathe life into them.

Actors want to act. I think a lot of times what happens is that they're expected to bring it all. Probably because I'm a writer, I'm not telling them what to do. I just provide them with as much as I can.

An actor can change himself to fit a part, whereas a personality has to change the part to fit himself. The personality has to say it his own way.

It's nice because working in England I'm know for working in television and theater when you get a chance to come out, it is quite fun to be out from behind the mask. You need to let people know who you are.

There is a little bit of me infused in every character I play.

If I read a part and think I can connect to it, that I can touch people with it, I will do it, no matter what its size. And if I think I can't do something with a part, I won't take it.