Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes

Acting is like roller skating. Once you know how to do it, it is neither stimulating nor exciting.

The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.

Actors get bored.

Being on stage a lot is quite physical.

I do get antsy if I haven't got lines to learn, a character to play. But yes, I do take holidays.

I'm someone who started in the theater and really couldn't stand repeating the show. My favorite part of acting is the five or six weeks of rehearsal that you get. I like doing previews; I like the opening week because my friends and family come, and then after that, I don't want to do it anymore.

I'm always trying to memorize lines, whether I understand them or not.

That's what I really focused on in school - straight drama - and I would love to get an opportunity to do that.

To do eight shows a week saying exactly the same lines, you have to be obsessively perfecting it or utterly mindless.

As an actress, emotions are my business, my stock-in-trade. As such, I've dealt with them nearly all my life.

I just don't want to play the same guy again over and over.

As an actor, you usually live your life with faith.

In theater, there's a lot of work to do to build the characters. It's a great experience.

I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work.

You've got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator.

I grew up doing sitcoms and theater and even playing with the Beach Boys, where you're programmed to perform, your body gets into a rhythm and you know it has to perform.

Acting in a stage play is like working the evening shift in an office.

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day. 'Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here's Matt researching in aisle six of his local library'. A few hours of that and they'd go home.

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.

I did a musical that I don't think anybody ever saw, called 'One Shining Moment,' and in that cast was Megan Mullally and Kevin Anderson.

If I had my druthers, I would do only stage work.

As an actor, you always dream of having material that showcases what you can do.

I used to teach kids when I was younger. When I was about 14 or 15 I started teaching children drama and something that I used to say to them was, 'Don't be afraid.' People would be afraid of forgetting their lines or something.

If you're saying the same line 10 times and making it look like you just came up with it, that's acting.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.