Stage Roles Quotes

I would have liked Sir Laurence Olivier to ask me to go to the Old Vic and let me play all the roles Judi Dench got.

Among the roles I've played on stage, television and in films were politicos as diverse as Abe Lincoln, Juan Peron, Herman Goering, George Wallace and both Roosevelts.

What I love is a good role. In the theatre, there is just a canon of extraordinary roles, the quality of character is amazing, but I also love working in front of a camera. It was the first one for me; as a kid I was in front of a camera. I feel at home.

I want to do drama, light comedy, the whole range.

Every time I do a play, I'm like, 'When do I get to do the one where I wear a gown, sit in a chair, and say funny things?' I'd love to do that.

There are so many huge roles in the theatre: if you've got the option to play Hedda Gabler on stage, why wouldn't you choose that over a three-line part in a Hollywood film as somebody's maid or somebody's wife or somebody's best friend?

If you're sixty-something, pushing 70, the chances of you getting a tremendously fascinating part in the movies are very low, as to be almost negligible, or even in television. But in the theatre, there are still things to do, very interesting, very profound things.

I have roles in plays that I hope that I'll be able to do one day. I might be doing them at, like, the East Wilton Playhouse in wherever. But I think that Edie Falco... to get something even resembling her type of roles, that would be amazing.

I remember one play [when I was kid] was about this murderous mad scientist, and my whole part was to be the guy who got thrown into a vat of acid as the curtain went up. I was very pissed off at these older kids; they'd outsmarted me.

I've always wanted to play more comic parts.

I'd love to be able to play all different roles, whether it's Maureen in Rent or Maria in West Side Story. I would just love to be involved in this business forever.

But as far as dream roles - I know this is so expected of me, but I would to play Elphaba in 'Wicked' on Broadway. I have a lot of dream roles, but that's like my main one because of the vocal track. I love belting high things!

In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.

I was up at Big Sur with Christopher Reeve and Christine Lahti, doing this woman in a big fat-suit - Mrs. Bassett in Tennessee Williams' Summer And Smoke - and my husband was in the show too, playing Lahti's fiancée. Every night he'd be proposing to beautiful Christine Lahti, and I'd barrel onstage in this fat-suit. I hated it! But I did it, because by then I knew that that was my casting.

There aren't that many great female roles in Shakespeare - none that I'd be desperate to play.

In school nativity plays I was always the bloody little donkey, I was never Mary.

Why do a crappy film role when you can do a meaty stage role? and ...I'm not small and curvy and I don't fit the prerequiste for small, passive, sexy chicks.

When I am on the opera stage, I am playing someone else. In recitals, I even have the chance to talk to the audience, which is something you don't get to do in opera.

Personally, I don't want to live with limitations. If there comes a time where I am dying to play Juliet or Macbeth, I want to make those avenues for myself.

I felt like jumping out a window when I heard Streisand was doing it. I'd played it four and a half years - I thought Dolly was mine. But after the initial shock wore off, I realized no great part is ever exclusively anybody's.

I'm was a very shy person, a very shy person and couldn't go to people in my college. We used to do plays, and I would never get the main female role. I would always get a boys' role because it was a girls college and I was a little taller than other girls.

I guess I've been extremely keen on theatre, on getting on to the stage, taking on different roles, enacting vocations, personalities, people, situations, and I guess that's the interest that has driven me to work in movies.

I'm very much looking forward to my 30-40 years of acting, and, as I get older, I'm really looking forward to some of the roles that are out there to play.

I don't stop. It's my nature. People have to tell me to slow down. I plan on playing every role on Broadway. I want to do 'Evita.' I want to do 'Sweeney Todd' with Chris Colfer. We want to do 'Wicked.' I'll be Elphaba and he wants to play 'Guy-linda.' I want to do movies, make music. 'Glee' is only the beginning.

Television can be a little tricky in terms of finding roles that feel fully flushed out, which is why I love being in the theater so much, because the roles tend to be really on the page.