Tom Ellis Quotes

I never wanted to go to drama school. I thought that was too many eggs in one basket.

My mom suggested studying acting in college, but I was a bit scared to choose that path because I couldn't wrap my head around the drama school audition process.

I thought I'd be doing weird, Off Broadway theater after I graduated.

When I first started out in Houston, it was theater or bust. And I loved it. I still love it. And then I went to undergraduate and graduate school for acting.

I think because of my background - I went through university and did an academic career and fell into acting - I've never had a game plan for my career because I got into it quite ad hoc.

I'm confident in my ability to maintain a career. I don't know if it will be doing either independent films or plays in New England.

When I left drama school, there were dozens of rep theatres you could apply to where you got a good training.

When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.

I really feel like the first day I went to drama school and I went up on stage, that I found my vocation. It's kind of a cliched thing to say but I really feel like it was what I was meant to do.

People say, 'What are your hobbies?' I say, 'I've been doing shows ever since I was a kid.' When I left college, all I wanted to be was a musical theater chick. I auditioned tons. It just didn't pan out.

I did a lot of musicals when I was young and finally went to drama school to try and get away from doing musicals... and of course the first thing that happened when I got out is I got offered a musical. And then when I got to the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was my next job, I ended up doing a bloody musical!

Right after I left drama school, I had a job.

When I got to college, acting suddenly seemed like a very risky proposition and all my friends were going to law school or med school or Wall Street.

When I got into drama school, that's when I knew that I could safely say that I wanted to be a professional actor.

I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.

We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master's degree program, and we want them - to expose them to everything.

The acting came about because of a girl. I was 19 and met a girl who wanted to go to the premiere drama school in Australia, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, where Mel Gibson, Cate Blanchett and many others went. She had an audition, and I went with her for moral support - to cheer her on. I did an audition my way, and it kept going.

I did some acting in high school and then a little more in college, and it just was the thing that I felt that I wanted to do more than anything else. And then I was fortunate enough to audition for and get into Yale Drama School right after college, and I spent three years there.

I went to an ordinary primary school, and then I started performing in a show called 'Billy Elliot' on the West End, and that was sort of my drama school.

When I left drama school I was prepped to be in shows and tour around England by van.

I went to the theater school at DePaul University in Chicago, the Goodman School.

Upon graduating from my acting program at The Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa Maria, CA, I went to my first tap audition. It was for the 1st national equity tour of '42nd Street.'

I never went to drama school. It's a brilliant thing for the right type of person, but I threw myself in the deep end.

I went to New York out of college, and in my day, we were told that was the way you became a good actor. You don't go to Hollywood, you go straight to New York and work in the theater. So that's what most of the people I knew did.

I've done a lot of different things. I would say, it's really hard for me to say what the ultimate role would be. You look at a film if it comes to you.