Isaiah Washington Quotes

What I love is a good role. In the theatre, there is just a canon of extraordinary roles, the quality of character is amazing, but I also love working in front of a camera. It was the first one for me; as a kid I was in front of a camera. I feel at home.

I'd rather have a small part in a good film with good people than play the lead in something I don't really care for.

It wasn't my intention in going after this part but I suppose now I do. The adult roles are a lot meatier - you're not always just the daughter or the girlfriend or whatever.

The first drama thing I really got stuck into was 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' I played Puck. That's when I said, 'I want to be an actor.'

No matter how good you might be in a movie, you'll never be any better. But in a play, I can be better next Tuesday. That's the thrill of it.

I had a role in 'Crossroads' when I was about 21, and then I went on to perform in 'Small Change' and then 'Piaf' in the Donmar Warehouse, London, and it was when I was there that some casting directors spotted me.

When I was going through school, I joined the Lyceum Youth Theatre, and that kind of cemented it. Through being in and around the building and watching shows, I realised that there was something I really loved about it, so I went into the stage management side.

I'm more an actor who can dance and sing if I absolutely have to. I studied theatre in college, but I studied drama, but I don't have that Broadway voice, and I'm not a trained dancer or anything like that. I identify mostly as an actor first and foremost.

I grew up in a household that was very friendly towards the theatre and acting.

Post my graduation, I really thought that acting was something I wanted to do. I simply took a chance and started auditioning, and I loved it.

Ideally, I would like to play roles in as many classics as possible: 'Rebecca,' 'Hedda Gabler.' I'm fond of a corset.

I didn't particularly aim to be a Shakespeare actor, but I suppose I had a certain gift or it; I certainly got offered lots of it. I liked Complicite and Shared Experience and Kick Theatre, and all the small theatre companies that were getting going. I wanted to be like that, making original theatre.

I'm focused on the work. And now I've done 'Morris' and 'Mr. Robot,' my appetite is whet to go deeper. It's fun, and it's challenging, and it stretches me. I'm not saying I'm done with comedy by any stretch of the imagination. I'm saying, yeah, let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I get sent a lot of scripts where you're just the mom.

I really enjoy playing intelligent characters. I'm more interested in that than just emotional kind of Mum characters.

I was 12 when it really hit me. I did children's theatre camp during the summers and played a fairy in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The next summer, I played Clytemnestra in 'Agamemnon' and I was like, 'OK, this is amazing.'

I would love to play Mary in 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' or 'Virginia Woolf' or a comedy - just, like, a slapstick comedy.

I was really an actor before I knew I could sing. And I just put the two together and went to musical theater school. But acting is a huge passion of mine, so it doesn't matter which medium as long as I have the opportunity to grow and to learn from a piece of work and work with good people, and on a very good-quality project.

The theatre training is second to none in Ireland and England. You meet people who haven't had theatre training - it is harder for people who worked in TV to go into theatre than the other way around.

I do glamorous roles only when the script demands it and that too with limitations.

I grew up on stages. Not standing outside the 'Royal Court Theatre' wistfully, but with enthusiastic people from the community.

People assume that actors working in films won't have the time to do theatre. But I make sure that whenever I'm free, I watch a play.

I think I have a period drama face. That's the reason I've always gone back to the West End, because for me, that's where all the interesting roles have been.

Theatre polished me as an artist.

In theatre, I loved doing '2nd May 1997' at the Bush. Jack Thorne is a brilliant writer, and it was really exciting and felt new and different for me.