Kenneth Cranham Quotes

There's so much control of the audience's experience when you're on stage doing a play, whereas when working on camera, there's a lot of people that have to do a lot of things exactly right for anything that I do to matter at all.

I love film because you have the last word. I never get that on stage because you've got to really believe; you've got to get the actors to trust you, and they have to believe in you, and then hopefully they will when you open the show.

The difference with doing a play is that you are in control. In film you are in the hands of the director and the editor and the producer.

The process of doing a play is an organic one, and the process of doing a film is totally inorganic.

In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

I guess I've been extremely keen on theatre, on getting on to the stage, taking on different roles, enacting vocations, personalities, people, situations, and I guess that's the interest that has driven me to work in movies.

You know, the great thing about acting or, indeed, filmmaking in general, is that we're all given a reason to do research. You kind of have to, really, if you want to know what you're doing, but it opens up this whole new understanding.

Actors always have opinions.

I did a lot of theater, so especially as an on-camera camera actor, there are so many things that aren't in your toolbox. They're somebody else's job. You think about editors and rhythm. Volume isn't even in your control.

Roles make the actor.

Yes, it is a rehearsed show, yes, it was analogy of going to see a play at the theatre, where everything has to be in place and whole things, everything being works, all works together to get the best effect you know it's more like an actor learning a part.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

I'm a total theater junkie - whether I'm working on a stage or sitting in a seat. I am always looking for a great play and a great part to do.

Acting is ephemeral. You can't hang it on a wall. You can't throw it off. And you can't bring it out of a closet. It's there one night and it's gone the next, at least with stage acting anyhow.

What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.

That's the great thing about being an actor, you get to try out lots of things for your roles.

I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?

Theater will always be a huge part of my life. The high I get from doing theater is not, quite honestly, matched by many things. I like the fact that when you step out on the stage, for that given night, for better or for worse, you are the master of the boards. I love it to death.

There are always leading characters. There are always complex characters; there are very rewarding plays with great directors and tremendous playwrights, yeah. I've done a lot of things with theater that I'm very, very proud of.

Later, I even appeared in a Rock Opera with Richard Gere.

That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further.

Definitely as an actor, the experience you have, at least I'm talking for me, my experience as an actor is you go to the set and know what you're going to do, know your lines, you rehearse, you do your scene, you go back home. As a producer, for the first time I saw the whole picture in a completely different way.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

My dad was a theater actor, so I would follow him backstage. And my mom was a casting director. The moment I heard the applause and realized it would get me out of school, I was hooked.