King Lear alone among these plays has a distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, from the point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leading figure.
I can be a teddy bear, but more people tend to see me as the other side of the coin, and that has to do with casting, more Iago than Hamlet. But I don't play villains; I play people doing the right thing for the circumstances and time.
Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, 'The Tempest' loses much of its resonance.
The only time I've played a real baddy was when I was Regan in 'King Lear.'
I hated teaching Shakespeare. In order for the students to understand what was going on, you had to tell them the story of 'Macbeth' or whatever. Shakespeare is about character and language, and they didn't get any of that.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
I'd love to tackle a classic Shakespeare play or take on Nora Helmer in 'A Doll's House.' Musical theater, it's the classics like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter's 'Kiss Me Kate.' I'm much more a Julie Andrews-type soprano than an Idina Menzel.
I think Mercutio in 'Romeo and Juliet' would be my favorite role. I've never played it, but I would love to do it.
I did 'Othello' at the Oregon Shakes - I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two and a half years. That's where my training is.
Shakespeare in the Park is one of the greatest gifts in New York City. You just have to wait for the tickets - and it's worth the wait.
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.
Doing Shakespeare in the Park has always been a dream. Everyone else says Hamlet, but I want to play Romeo.
'Thor' has got several big battles in it, a reckless, headstrong young hero who has to confront his past and deal with a complicated relationship with his father, it has lots of savage Europeans hacking each other to death at various points, and all of this sounded very much like 'Henry V.'
I did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.
Romeo and Juliet were stunning and beautiful, but a lot of the other characters surrounding them were caricatures.
I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.
A laughing Lear would be monstrous. Not so a laughing Romeo and Juliet.
A British actor will savour every syllable of a Shakespearean line, while a French actor will drive to the end of a sentence or a speech with a propulsive rhythm: the thing you never say to a French actor is, 'Take your time.'
The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.
If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.
'King Lear,' I've been seeing all my life. I mean, the great actors of my lifetime... to join their company, as it were, by playing a part that's challenged them, is one of the great joys of being an actor who does the classics.
I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not going to get a history lesson on the Roman Empire. It was about love, sex, and also about dynastic troubles.
Hamlet is a little daunting.
I would love to play Richard III.
I think, the first time I played Iago at the Public Theater, I realized I had a - much to my chagrin - I realized I had an instinct for these conflicted characters, for these torn characters, for these characters who could be described as evil. I wouldn't describe them that way.
