Nina Arianda Quotes

A play is not a play until it's performed, and unless it's a one-person play that is acted, directed and designed by the author, many other people will be deeply involved in the complicated process that leads to its performance.

I do love the clothes on 'Mad Men' because my character has been so elegant and I would never have had access to these clothes. I think Janie Bryant is a costume designing genius. They'll call and tell me, 'It will only take an hour,' and I'm like, 'I will try on the whole truck!'

Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

When I started producing, it was George Abbott directing and he would let me do the scenery. He just wanted to know where the doors were - the entrances, the exits; the tables, the props - and then I would hire the designer. I took charge of the visuals - scenery and costumes and so on. And, the shows looked wonderful.

I design all of the costumes for my movies, actually.

I think Jenny Beavan is a masterful costume designer and very deserving of the Oscar for 'Mad Max: Fury Road.'

I have been a scrappy actor for 10-plus years, and when you're playing supporting roles, your relationship with the costume designer is very different.

When you're doing a legitimate play, if you have a company of 12, it's considered a big cast.

One of my fantasies is to produce 'Auntie Mame' as a play.

My first performance was as one of the orphans in 'Oliver!'

Before Bianca?? I don't remember that far back! That would've been in my teens. I was working in local theater and opera, doing costumes, hair and makeup.

I turned my hand to costume design a few years ago when I created the outfits for 'This Is the Sea,' with Richard Harris and Samantha Morton. It's a very different discipline to being a fashion designer, though - you have to rein in your own vision and work to a tight brief.

On-screen wardrobes are important. They help create an overall aura, and with local productions being viewed all around the globe, they represent our aesthetics to the world.

The financial side of Broadway is the easy part. Plenty of people want to put money in a Broadway show. The challenging part is finding the material that excites me enough to spend a couple of years of my life devoted to it.

I did a brief stint with set design and stage design. And I tried playwriting, too.

I didn't want to do Chekhov or Shakespeare. So I switched my major from acting to costume design. Eventually, I got a job working as a wardrobe assistant for a theater company. I would dress the actors, fix their costumes, do the quick changes for them and all that stuff.

I've been really lucky to work with a lot of theater directors in the film, like Stephen Daldry on 'The Crown' and Richard Eyre on 'The Dresser.'

They had a contest where they would - for some reason, someone in the past loved musical theater, and so if you wrote a musical, they would fully fund it and put it on the main stage with full costumes and a set and everything, and my roommate said we should totally do that.

I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived.

Hal Prince and Andrew actually asked me if I would be interested in continuing with 'Phantom', but obviously I was under contract to 'Les Mis' by then.

Why did I want to become a director? I just had an early interest. My uncle was an actor in a local community theatre, and he ultimately persuaded me and a buddy of mine to come to that theatre, and we went to meet girls, and that turned into interested in kind of behind-the-scenes things, and from that point on, I was focused.

I grew up doing a lot of theater - acting and making sets and costumes.

When I was 17, I moved to Sydney to study set design at NIDA.

As an artist, you're thankful to get a shot at a story more than once, because it doesn't happen all the time. Whether you talk about 'Hamlet' or 'Death of a Salesman,' you always want to see what the next group of actors will do.

'Breaking In' shows what it's really like backstage at New York Fringe Theatre.