Cush Jumbo Quotes

I would love to play Richard III.

The most likely explanation is the most practical. 'Macbeth' is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of 'Macbeth'. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.

At drama school, I always picked the really evil roles. It's a great way to deal with your everyday emotions.

The only time I've played a real baddy was when I was Regan in 'King Lear.'

I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.

I like drama as well. When I played Hamlet, I got one review that said, "This must surely be the funniest Hamlet in history," but schoolgirls would still cry when he died.

If you read Shakespeare's stage directions, all the gore and violence is right in there.

'The Merchant of Venice' is a straightforward, clear story, while 'The Winter's Tale,' as a general rule, is hard to present because there is so much plot.

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

'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.

I watched Mark Rylance in the Broadway revival of 'La Bete,' and it knocked my socks off. The complete commitment, passion, and unbridled enjoyment in every moment of what he was doing was overwhelming.

I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not going to get a history lesson on the Roman Empire. It was about love, sex, and also about dynastic troubles.

A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.

King Lear alone among these plays has a distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, from the point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leading figure.

There's something really exciting about playing someone where you're given license to be unpredictable.

Each action of the actor on the stage should be the visible concomitant of his thoughts.

I love the Shakespeare history plays; I love the struggle for the crown as a plot.

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

The funniest thing happened in one of my first scenes. In the beginning Emma was really arrogant and punk and in every scene she would slam the door when she walked in or out.

No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.

I think with Shakespeare you can be required to do absolutely anything at the turn of a sixpence - suddenly you go into a battle, suddenly you utter something passionate.

Over the years, I have been asked to play these sort of scary frenetic characters that express their emotions physically.

It was actually a relief for me to play an actor who was scared, who didn't know where everything was, who didn't know what buttons to push, and for me to be able to play all that.

When you're playing someone who is angry and sad all the time, you get a little down.

When I wrote 'East,' I wanted a completely earthy, very sexy, very violent play, so I wrote in verse. I found it not only satisfying but releasing. It gave me an opportunity to play with language. We never played the characters like the yobs that they are, but rather in a slightly heightened way.