Eric McCormack Quotes

My real training as an actor was when I started doing theatre.

I don't feel like I properly started acting until I did my first play, 'Tusk, Tusk.'

I think if you're an actor, then you can work on stage - but if you've never done it before, you're going to have picked up a few things that you're going to need to change when you're working on stage.

I think in any form of acting, you're always well served if you've done theater.

I would absolutely recommend for actors to start in the theater because it establishes a foundation in your craft that you can build off of.

The difference between working with actors that have put their time in the theater and just straight film and television actors is that you trust theater actors a lot more. You know that they're seriously more trained than anyone else because theater is the best place to grow as an actor.

I am acting at university, and I have really enjoyed doing student drama.

My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting.

A solid theatrical education can only improve a screen performance. It gives you a fuller capacity to read a script and understand a character, for one thing. It's important to alternate between the two activities.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

My style is an extension of acting and an outcome of some serious lessons I picked up learning when I did theatre in my early days.

I needed to do a play. I needed to learn how to act again, in a focused, all-encompassing way, and a really challenging play is a great way to do that.

I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.

Theatre gives you an altogether different kind of thrill which every actor who wants to grow must try.

In 1954 I was on Broadway for five months in 'The Matchmaker' and went once a week to the classes of Uta Hagen, a theatrical guru whose teaching in retrospect illuminated the whole of my training at the Old Vic.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

I went to drama school in the U.K., where we did endless Chekov plays.

An actor matures with experiences, and the more the emotions he/she has been through, the greater the intensity of performances.

People often argue about this. Obviously one of the skills in performance is acting, and you can't expect every Romeo to really be in love with their Juliet!

I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value.

Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That's why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.

A big moment for me was when I did a play that was a new adaptation of Dostojevskij's 'Crime and Punishment,' and I played Raskolnikov. It was actually the first thing I did when I got out of acting school.

I've always felt like I've been in good shows.

I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with.

I think theatre helped, only because it was acting experience. I got to work with a lot of directors.