Stage Vs Screen Quotes

It's interesting to me because theater is, on any given day, 10,000 times harder than film and television. And that's not to say film or television can't be hard or challenging; it's emotional to do the same thing over and over and over. But in terms of stamina, there is nothing like an eight-show week to separate the men from the boys.

Maybe it's a bit snobby, but it's as if you're a proper actor if you do stage.

There is nothing to be scared of in movies. It's a bit scarier going on stage.

The theater's a live thing, and film is, to some extent, a discipline where you're putting everything together and trying to execute something exactly. You do it away from people and then you present it at the end.

Whether it's animated, whether it's live-action, whether it's Broadway, whether it's television, a musical is a musical is a musical. So, pretty much you approach the songs in pretty much the same way. The difference might be that in a film you have a close up. On stage you don't. So there are more songs on the stage because the songs are kind of the close up.

I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.

Unlike the stage, I never found it helpful to be good in a bad movie.

What do I need a movie for? The stage is on a higher level in every way, and a more satisfying medium. Movies, by comparison, are like calendar art next to great paintings. You can't really do very much in movies or in television, but the stage is such an anarchistic medium.

I think I'm becoming more relaxed in front of a camera. I suppose I'll always feel slightly more at home on stage. It's more of an actor's medium. You are your own editor, nobody else is choosing what is being seen of you.

I was more used to acting onstage, for a long time. I don't know, maybe I was temperamentally more suited to stage stuff. And there are things about the stage that I miss in a lot of ways.

I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.

At CBS, I’m in your house. I’m mindful of that. When I do standup, you’re in my home and I can say what I want to.

Stage performance is obviously a much grander sort of depiction. The audience isn't right in your face as close as a camera lens gets.

I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.

The lens is the actor's best critic... showing his mind more clearly than on the stage. You can get wonderful cooperation out of the lens if you are true, but God help you if you are not.

You get to know a character that you play on-stage in a pretty profound way over a length of time. I don't want to sound highfalutin and say you become the character, you just start bringing more and more of yourself to the part until the character and actor, it's hard to tell them apart. It's some weird amalgam. In film, because of the period of time, I don't know that you ever get that deep into it.

Onstage, there's a separation between character and audience; onscreen, you can go to a deeper place.

If you mess up the performance on stage, you do it again the next night. You're like alright, you let yourself off the hook, and you've got to go back in there. Whereas, with a film, I would go home and be like, "Well, I've ruined the arc of the character forever. That scene is never going to work. I know because I can never shoot it again." So, it's all miserable, but in different ways.

Something I've always known about the screen is that if it's anything in the world, it's literal. It's so literal that there's a whole lot you can't do because you're stuck with the literalness of the screen. The stage is not literal.

Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the director's eyes, you 'get it right' does not allow for very much creative freedom... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater.

At Julliard, they don't teach you where to move your face for the camera, you know?

I don't know which I like best. I love the applause on the stage. But pictures are so fascinating - you reach many millions through them. And you make more money too.

Because I trained in theater, I always leave a film shoot feeling like I haven't done anything, like I just sat in front of the camera and whispered, essentially.

Obviously, doing TV and doing theater are completely different because they're two totally different mediums. On stage, you worry about your voice and how you move physically. On TV, something like an eye twitch is what they could be looking for from you because it's so contained.

The exercise in theater is night after night you are doing the same play, but you have another opportunity to explore. It changes nightly even because of the audience and your day going into the evening of the performance. With film it's much more controlled.