Barbara Barrie Quotes

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn't good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

How little the public realizes what a girl must go through before she finally appears before the spotlight that is thrown upon the stage.

I haven't appeared on stage in quite a long time and I don't have any immediate plans to do so, but I'm always interested in going back.

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

I was living in New York City and flat broke. My next door neighbor was an actor and he always seemed to be having more fun than I was. He convinced me to give acting a shot, but because of my shyness I was sure it would be a lost cause.

I auditioned for a one-act version of 'The Princess and the Pea' called 'The Ugly Duckling,' and I was cast as the King, starting a pattern of being cast in roles originally intended for men. I went to the first rehearsal, and I didn't get any laughs, and I choked and I quit. I walked away from it and joined the tennis team.

I've always loved acting but never thought I could do theatre because I got the worst stage fright ever.

I think I'm still trying to find my feet as an actor. And I know it ain't brain surgery, but it confuses me and it comes between me and my sleep a lot.

'Rent' was my first professional job, ever.

I moved to New York and couldn't get a job as an actor. And waited tables for so long.

In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things.

I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.

All I wanted was to be a regional-theater actor, to be in a company. I thought it would be a great life. I don't think I understood how difficult it would be.

I went to school to be an actor in Canada and realized I hated auditions once I left, which is a huge problem if you want to get a part.

That's one of the reasons I wanted to be an actor, to be like them. And there they were at my table, all talking about how nervous they were, about the lines, and so forth. No matter how big you get, you still have the same kinds of anxieties and so forth.

Ordinarily during the stage of your life when you're going through your adolescence and you're completely awkward and uncomfortable, the rest of the world isn't watching you with bated breath. It's different when you're an actor and you choose to work your way through that period because it only makes it worse.

When I'm doing theatre, I feel like my life's on hold. Even though you might go out for a coffee, or go and see a film, your brain is still there, pulling you back to it.

I don't know what else I could do but pretend to be an actor.

Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.

I find performing very difficult. It's difficult to be a good actor. I get very nervous, even though it sounds disingenuous, because you could legitimately go, 'Well, why do it?'

I was terrified, terrified in 'Songwriter,' because there I was, New York Jewish girl, singing country-western onstage with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. I mean, forget it. I was so terrified.

I've been acting since I was 9, but in college I entered the drama program, and I didn't excel at it at all, kind of for the first time.

Being an actor can be a lonely life.

I was fired as an actor on 'Bosch.'

I used to be a wonderful auditioner. When I was living in New York, I'd audition every day. And I like to audition. But then it got to a point where I didn't like it anymore.