Tracy Letts Quotes

I could make thousands of dollars in Broadway musicals, but among the best experiences I had was doing 'Hamlet' in Milwaukee and a version of 'Cyrano' that my wife wrote for me on a bus-and-truck tour.

There is probably some great acting that goes on in movies from people who have never been on a stage, but if you are in for the long haul, you'd be missing an enormous part of what being an actor is if you're not part of theater.

I've been performing my whole life. My mom signed me up for a theater program when I was five - I was the evil queen in 'Once Upon a Mattress.'

There are so many talented actors in Chicago, I have to go see shows when I'm there. A lot of these actors, who I've seen when I'm in Chicago in theaters, are technically amazing and never have an opportunity to showcase it on a bigger medium.

Acting has been my passion from the minute I started. I was pretty young when I wanted to be a doctor, but when I started doing theater work as a freshman in high school, the first time I hit the stage I was like, If I can do this every day, life won't get any better!

I'm a stage actor. That is what I do.

I certainly did plays in high school and community theater, and I want to get back on the stage.

I was raised in the theater and I started acting when I was nine. To me, the idea of being an actor was about playing different characters and being a chameleon. That's why I was in the theater.

I'm just a stage actor from Chicago.

I sort of fell in love with it when I was in high school doing theater. And so, as sometimes happens when kids - they graduate high school, and people turn to them and say, 'So what are you going to do with your life?' I thought, 'Well, I like being onstage. I like being an actor.'

I wrote 'The Room', 'The Birthday Party', and 'The Dumb Waiter' in 1957, I was acting all the time in a repertory company, doing all kinds of jobs, traveling to Bournemouth and Torquay and Birmingham.

The first thing I wrote was a one-act play that got accepted at a one-act play festival, and I was in it along with Nathan Lane and a couple of other very good actors.

I went to the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU and wrote and directed a small amount of stuff there.

I liked 'Brighton Beach Memoirs,' which I did with Neil Simon. I kind of was playing him, as Eugene Morris Jerome, and I played that a few times at the very beginning of my career.

I've never done regional theater, and I'm getting to make my Broadway debut as a principal, playing a pretty cool part, so there are probably people keeping an eye on me to see if I'll trip up.

I was always the kid who was putting on plays, and so I have no idea how to describe it. I just have always wanted to be an actor.

I actually started working in Chicago while I was still a student; I did the Chicago premiere of 'The History Boys' at the end of my junior year. I had come to Chicago for Northwestern University. I didn't quite know about the theater community, and what I did know was mostly the improv.

I didn't know I was going to go into musical theater necessarily. It was never planned. I just kind of fell into it because I knew I wanted to act, and yet I had this opera training... I knew I had a voice.

I was 17 when I first acted on stage. I was a part of an Urdu adaptation of 'Spartacus' in the titular role.

You'd be surprised how much being a good actor pays off.

It wasn't until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.

There was a little part of me that always felt like I was going to be an actress, but I never acted when I was growing up. I was a dancer. That's all I did, all day, all my life. Maybe this was just where I was meant to be, and somehow I ended up here, but it just felt right. As soon as I started acting, it just felt like it was meant to be.

I'm an actor - I want to be known for that.

I started off in theater; I did exclusively theater for four or five years. In the last few years, television has come along but I can still make film. I feel very privileged that I can move between them.

Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity. My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.