Michael Moriarty Quotes

I had a moment - and I don't know if it was funny, necessarily, but I realized the effect I could have on people - when I was doing a production of 'The Little Prince,' and I played the snake.

I love theatre because it's just me and the audience. It's the litmus test in acting, to be able to sustain a performance over one, two or three hours.

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.'

Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene.

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.

Directors are denied a great pleasure, which is that of being on stage.

In theatre, I loved doing '2nd May 1997' at the Bush. Jack Thorne is a brilliant writer, and it was really exciting and felt new and different for me.

I really love to act; I love everything about it. I've never had this addiction to being known. I mean, sure, if you go into acting, there's part of you that is saying, 'I want attention' but I was brought up to work to deserve attention, and it is the work, not the trappings that are important.

When I was prepping for my Broadway debut as Romeo, it really hit me that I had never done that. I had trained at drama school for three years in my late teens to early 20s, and I'd studied Shakespeare, of course, but I hadn't actually performed it. So to do something like Romeo for my first Broadway role was a challenge.

I love doing theater so much - being in front of an audience and seeing how a character grows and develops with every performance.

It was a wonderful experience to live the life for a year; to spend all day doing Shakespeare and then do a play in the evening.

Acting is a sport - especially working with Mark Rylance. There is competition involved. I have to be muscular, challenging, get audiences on side. It's extraordinary how Globe audiences join in - it's like competing at an event - I love it.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

Two of the first plays I saw after I arrived in Britain were 'King Lear' in Liverpool, and 'Antony and Cleopatra' at Stratford. One was produced with hardly a backdrop and the other with gigantic scene changes. I was impressed by what connected the two: the words and their life beyond the stage.

You've got to love acting and that's true for me. I love the idea of getting on stage and getting in front of a camera.

I would love to be remembered as one of the greatest Lears or Hamlets.

I've got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I've done it.

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.

Live theater is just an incredibly powerful medium, and I think anyone who goes, whether they know about it or not, if they see something that sort of fits with them, it's kind of hard to deny that they had a good time.

That's what I've wanted to do my whole life, just act. When I was younger, I loved to entertain people. I always used to make up dance routines, do little plays. I love to perform, basically.

I love the rehearsal process in the theatre, and the visceral sense of contact and communication with a live audience.

At the end of the day, acting is all about telling lies. We are professional imposters and the audience accept that. We've made this deal that we tell you a tale and a pack of lies, but there will be a truth in it. You may enjoy it, or it will disturb you.

The first drama thing I really got stuck into was 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' I played Puck. That's when I said, 'I want to be an actor.'

I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.