Tom Stoppard Quotes

Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

Being on film is forever. Television, as well, just lives on and on and on, which is really exciting. But then with theater, it's like an experience. You have to be there that one special night that was like that to see that one performance that was really remarkable. It's more intimate as well. So I like them both.

Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that's its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.

I looked at theater, in the sense that theater is unmanipulated. If I want to pay more attention to one character on stage than another, I can. I think there's not enough theater in film and not enough film in theater, in a way.

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas. Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.

I love film and TV, the medium of them, just because it's such a smaller screen. It's much more precise. Ideally, I'd like to do maybe a film a year of some sort and use that to work more in the theatre because theatre really is my first love.

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'

Theater is about surprises and things that you haven't seen before on stage.

Once I had started film, I suddenly said, 'Wow, I love it.' I moved there from New York. But I've always gone back to the theater, and it is more satisfying, really, because you get to give a continuous performance - no sequels.

Theater is about life, not about television or movies.

I love the theater, and I just don't love television like that.

I've done theater most of my career, and I get to see the reaction of the audience right after the show.

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

I think I'm kind of attracted to the material more than the medium. I'm not opposed to doing a television show, though. I actually think there are a couple of good ones. And there is some terrible theater. Film is a very different kind of acting.

What I love about theatre is that it disappears as it happens.

Every time I go to the theater, there's something about the atmosphere, seeing something unfold live in front of an audience, that you can't get out of your system.

Many more people saw me on TV than will ever get to see me on stage, but I do love being in the same room as the people I'm telling the story to.

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

'The Painkiller' is a remarkable play.

For me, the world is a stage, and we are all playing the character we have chosen to play on that stage. It is the job of the photographer to capture the drama of the performance.

I love the smaller scenes. I love the smaller, slightly more theatrical scenes.

Theater is an engagement between the actor and the audience. Film is a different sort of medium. It's not immediate, but in some ways it's more involving.

Film and theater are about misdirection and making the audience see something. I find it interesting. One of the things we do in 'True Blood' is shoot all of our stunts in camera. Instead of doing some kind of visual effect, we try to make it happen.

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.

I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both.