Lesley Manville Quotes

I came up through the theater. I came out of drama college and started working in the professional theater.

As I got older, I auditioned for drama school and shocked myself by getting in.

I would love to be on Broadway!

Playing Sgt, Trotter in 'The Mousetrap' is the same as playing Scripps in 'The History Boys,' in the sense that they're dream roles that I've always wanted to do. The fact they're letting me do this professionally and I'm getting paid for it, I find astonishing.

When I was at drama school I wanted to do classical theatre. It just so happened that I did a film when I came out and I moved that way.

I want to be like Sutton Foster, Kristin Chenoweth or Anne Hathaway and do everything that has to do with performing.

I've never been in a bad play. There might have been bad productions and I might have been bad in them, but I've never been in a play that wasn't interesting or worthwhile doing on some level.

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.'

I consider that my best performance ever was as Peer Gynt.

It is hard to get good actors who also do television, ads and films. Theatre requires six weeks of rehearsal for a play.

In Michigan, if you want to act, it's local theater, it's high school theater and it's going to camp and putting on plays in the summer, and I always loved doing that. There was something that just drew me to it.

I'd love to do Broadway or the West End. I'm sure doing eight shows a week is gruelling, but I did a lot of stage shows in Sydney and I love performing live.

The first play I did was a funny one called 'The School for Wives', by Moliere. We were wearing the ugliest wigs and the worst costumes you can ever imagine to try to recreate 17th-century France in Singapore. But I got my first real pay cheque from that. I was very happy taking that cheque to the bank.

I've played dinner theaters. I'm a working stiff.

I wanted to be a Broadway star.

I went to anything that was on at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. I was quite geeky. There was a production of 'Look Back in Anger' with David Tennant and Kelly Reilly in it, and it blew me away. I still think about it and look back on it as the moment where I decided, 'I want to do that.'

I really would like to be on Broadway someday.

In the next five years, I'd absolutely love to do theater. I went to drama school and that's where the focus lies. I'd definitely like to do that before the fear sets in.

I would definitely go back to 'Kinky Boots' because that family, I think, is so wonderful and incredible, and my role and my part were just so fun to play. But I would definitely love to do other shows as well.

Honestly, if you're just going to be the love interest then at least let it be a really good movie. Not every role is going to be Hamlet, I know that.

I got into acting because I wanted to act and I love acting. That's my true north: to be creative and to be challenged in what I love to do.

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It's an evolution - doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk. Anyone would be up for a little bit of a change. It is so rewarding to do a movie, and so enjoyable. It's hard work, but really wonderful.

Of the nude pictures: Sure I posed. I needed the money.

Everything I did growing up was with that as the real goal - doing Broadway; doing theatre. That was always the big thrill for me.

I love doing both theater and television. I definitely foresee more Broadway, but I think I would like to keep the singing and the TV separate.