Ellen Burstyn Quotes

Seeing Shakespeare in the Park, for me, it's just this side of feeling like you've witnessed some kind of magic. It's this spell that you're under, to be part of that!

I saw a production of 'Titus Andronicus' at the Royal Shakespeare Company with Brian Cox back in 1987. That sort of rocked my world. It was a remarkable production in its simplicity and its realism and passion.

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.

Where I teach students in drama school, there's a course called Dramatics. In this course, all students must put on a play. However, acting majors are not supposed to act. They can write the play, for example, and the writers may work on stage art. Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show.

I fell in love with acting at around the age of 11, when I was drafted in to play a fairy at an amateur production of 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'

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

I love the theater. I love being on stage; I love the live audience. I also love dressing up and all of the make-believe.

Doing theater is such a specifically energetic and almost acrobatic work.

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

Sir Derek Jacobi has been an inspiration to so many actors and audiences throughout his brilliant career. To see him in Shakespeare is an event in itself.

I started in Shakespeare. I'm classically trained, which, how hilarious is that? Then one night, I saw Second City and thought, 'Wow, that's what I want to do.' But I never thought it would morph into screenplay writing.

I always ended up having the funny part in Shakespeare, but I really thought I'd be doing theater. That was my ambition for myself.

I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.

Doing theater makes you feel like a real actor.

We are actors. We can adapt to any different look for the sake of the story and the character.

It blows my mind that you get Shakespeare where the 'low' comedy characters have got Northern or Welsh accents.

Opera is a very stimulating place to work, and I believe it offers the most intense theatrical experience possible.

We're entertainers. We're theatrical.

I think theater is very much my natural home. But the truth is that the older I've got, and the more I've written film and television, I find it incredibly hard to write theater.

Theatre is really an actor's playground.

Acting is more creative and liberating than production.

At the moment, my trajectory isn't to think about acting. I'm absolutely devoted to The Imaginarium, our projects and directing. And watching and enabling other actors do their thing in our studio is hugely rewarding. I expect at some point I'll probably want to go back on stage and do some theater, because I've not done theater in 10 years.

By definition, acting is improvisation, even if you follow the lines. You invent what you do, when you do it.

I love theater. I think theater, when its done right, is the best, like a religious experience. When it is done badly, it's the worst thing. It's just an incredible experience.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser