Tom Ellis Quotes

Growing up in Seattle, I had the opportunity to take classes since I was 7 years old. I did theatre. I auditioned for film, television, commercials, and built up not just a resume but also some confidence. I learned how to master my craft before arriving in Los Angeles.

Early in my career I was accused of being overconfident and even cocky, but I really was confident that I had done the training and didn't see any other reason to say otherwise.

My first show in high school was 'The Music Man.' I was a junior. I played Harold Hill. I did the role at the University of Miami, too. I do love that musical. To do it in high school and college and then to do it professionally - I mean, come on!

I've been acting for 15 years now, and the more you do, the more confidence you get about 'this is my career, and this is what I'm going to be doing.' Since I've started coming to the States, I've had a really great response. It's given me a lot of confidence to be more judicious about my own choices.

I grew up singing, and I played on Broadway to thousands of people, you know what I mean?

At 14, I was modeling, which helped me come out of my shell, but I always dreamed of theater school.

Acting as a career is a long term thing and that work is kind of progressive and you can build on a career. It's part of the great tradition of the theater to me.

For me, being onstage for an hour and a half, my confidence was really huge for me. Doing eight shows a week for a run, I was like: "I'm actually doing this." And now I feel more confident going into something.

I've been on stage since I was five years old and I feel really at home there.

Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't.

I played Winnie the Pooh in first grade. I was an early adopter of standing in front of people and looking like an idiot.

I played St. Jimmy on Broadway I sort of caught the acting bug. But I didn't want to go full-bore into it because I have a lot to learn.

All I knew how to do was to act. That's the only thing I had in my favor. That was the thing that propelled me forward.

I'm scared of rehearsals, I'm scared of doing all this because I don't feel like I'm an actress.

I started acting when I was 13, so acting has been, with great fortune, my job since I could get a job.

Feeling confident - or pretending that you feel confident - is necessary to reach for opportunities. It's a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they're seized.

I have never reached certain levels of fame, like Lindsay Lohan did, or even Brittany Murphy. My career has always been this sort of even-keeled, steady existence. I was also raised by poets, and I've been doing poetry as long as I've been acting.

I don't think there is a role that I did twenty years ago that I couldn't do better now.

I went to University after my A levels and did a degree in performing arts. It was only when I got there that I realized there were stage schools out there, and you had your union and your contacts and The Spotlight and this whole world of the acting industry that I had no idea about. So when I graduated, I took a year out and just thought really hard about whether it was something I knew enough about, and whether it was the career I could dedicate the rest of my wacky life to.

I think I always knew I was going to somehow be on a stage. I was quite an extrovert, as a child. And I did a lot of music, when I was younger, so I thought I was going to go into music, but I fell into acting, in a really weird way.

I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual.

I want a career and the thing is you really have to love acting. I didn't just fall into it and it wasn't just something I was good at. I've had to really work at this. I've had to fall on my face time and time again. You get 'no' 99 per cent of the time and a 'yes' just once.

I knew I wanted to be a performer really early on, like around 8 years old. I did tons of acting and loved being in front of people.

I don’t think I would ever have been able to be an actress had I not started at nine years old. I would have been the last person to stand up and say, ‘I’d like to star in the play.’