Peter Ustinov Quotes

I don't think musicals are my thing. I'm not a big fan. Definitely have to get on the stage and do something like a straight play.

People think that we're crazy because we do six nights a week. I would physically not be able to take it, especially when you see how much he put into every show... He created this larger than life style and he pulled it off.

I love theatre. I think it's the home of most actors...most actors start with it. It's so enjoyable to do and to be able to see your audience. And the process of theatre is great.

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".

Theatrical times are different from concert times, to put it simply. Taking a figure like [Mahatma] Gandhi and setting him on a stage requires thinking about what theater is about and what the whole experience is about and what we're trying to communicate in that way, so you get into certain less abstract considerations.

I think every show I do, whether I am doing eight shows a week of a Broadway show... I think, "that's a show I'll never get back"... I go home at night and I think to myself, "that was my favorite".

I think it would be so fun to do some kind of comedy, something - I'm not exactly sure, but something like I just did Moliere's "Tartuffe" in class, and wow, what a stretch. Why go to classes? I get to play in Moliere's "Tartuffe," and I could never - nobody would ever think that they would be, I'd be right for that.

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

I opened the show with this line: "I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that's tomorrow night.

If I had to pick one form of acting, it would be live theater. That's where I started; that's where I became a man, I think I'm still finishing up that job.

I think theatre reminds us what we're doing as actors, because every night and every matinee day, you have an audience telling you what's working and what's not. And that's very good for us as actors to hone our skills.

I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas.

I would love to do Broadway. I dont think theres anything more amazing than theater. OK, Supergirl is number one. Maybe I could be Supergirl on Broadway That would be perfect.

I was really looking forward to doing the thing that I do - I basically appear just at the beginning and at the end of the 'The Glory of the World' play - but when I got to opening night, I started to get really sad that that was the last time I was going to see the play as a spectator without actually being in it.

This play John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.

I really think that people who want to think more serious have to go and watch theater. Theater is a very sterilized art form. Not as much as music, but very close to music.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.

I have a great deal of respect for the craft, I don't know how much respect it has for me. But it's a precision process. Doing it on stage would be, I think, terrifying. Doing it on film has its own difficulties, because film is not conducive to spontaneity. You might have a run through and get a few chuckles at eight o'clock in the morning, but you don't keep laughing at the same thing all day long.

I tend to stay up very late at night, so I wake up later in the day. This allows me to be in the middle of my workday when I am onstage at night.

I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!

I think, as an actor, theater is like one of the things that you feel most in control of and in charge of.

I always loved acting, but it's weird to think what I'd be doing if this hadn't come around. It's kind of a bit of a fluke how I got into it, so I'm grateful.

Hip," I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell's---my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons.

If you get up on stage and brag, I don't think that's very brave. It's braver to get up and take your clothes off. And I do that every night.