Ian Doescher Quotes

One of my favourite pieces is 'Antony and Cleopatra' - I'd love to be in that. Or an alternative version of 'Romeo & Juliet' where I get to play Mercutio, something like that.

I would love to play Richard III.

I would love to play Henry IV, Henry V, and Hamlet.

What prevailed was that it was a family story, so it didn't matter what the color. It was also the perfect subject matter for a miniseries: A best-selling book, a generational story, a social problem - they all made 'Roots' what a miniseries should be.

From its inception by Michael Bennett, 'Dreamgirls' has always been an epic story with an ensemble cast. I didn't change that. The screen version remains, really, a group story.

Many great horror stories are period pieces and English actors have a facility for historic characters.

I started to itch to do a play again and 'Macbeth' came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.

After Strangelove I also started work on an adaptation of The Collector.

The novel 'World War Z' is told from the perspectives of so many people - speaking to the narrator - that there's no way a movie could capture all of them. Still, the idea of turning a zombie pandemic into a war story is fascinating and could have translated easily to film.

I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they'll play him long after I have.

Playing Fagin in the play and film was a small miracle.

I loved doing Shakespeare. My two favorite roles, in fact, have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

'As You Like It' was the first Shakespeare production I ever did.

Classics are constantly being re-imagined and transformed, and the originals are none the worse for it; they endure.

During my career I've enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences.

I think the struggle, whenever you make a film or television movie based on a real person's life, is finding a dramatic arc that will hold an audience's attention.

Sometimes I just crave to play in Shakespeare again and I know and love playing Orlando so much.

I did a film called 'Days and Nights,' which is a modern-day retelling of and inspired by Chekhov's 'The Seagull.'

There is nothing new, from Greek mythology to Shakespeare to every romcom ever made, we're just reimagining the same 12 story plots over and over again - so what makes people keep watching and listening? It's all about the character.

I believe that pop culture is just, like, so ready for 'Watchmen.' We tried so hard to ride that wave between satire and reality, and all the things that make you still care about the character, but you don't miss the commentary about them.

I've played almost every lead character from Henry VI to Othello. I'm dying to tackle Richard III sometime.

With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material, I mean so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material.

Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world.

I think it's always challenging to look at a script and make it your own while maintaining the sense of what the style of the show is.