Theater World Quotes

When I was a teenager, I continued to visit imaginary places by spending all my free time at our local community theater. Whether I acted in a play or worked backstage, the world of Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare always seemed more real to me than the dreary life of high school.

None of my family had anything to do with show business, my life was totally foreign to them.

I loved being a film executive. But something was always missing for me. I always had the feeling that I was looking over my shoulder - what's going on on Broadway?

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors.

I've taken [acting] class with Larry Moss, who's more kind of in the theater world, so he's really educated me about playwrights.

I was very lucky: I started acting in this highly subsidized German theater world, so there was not so much job insecurity. We had great working conditions, long rehearsal times, well paid.

I have a Tony Award now. It hasn't changed too much in the theater world, but it gives me entree for film stuff and TV stuff, where people will see me more easily now because they know me.

Seventy-five per cent of being successful as an actor is pure luck. The rest is just endurance.

Joe Mantello is the uber director. I wrote him a card tonight saying basically, 'Will you adopt me?'

My mother's whole family had been from the theater, really. Because I grew up in Hollywood, I wasn't that interested in Hollywood. But the New York theater was completely exotic and fabulous to me.

I want to delve into the world of performing.

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

My mother had been an actress and we came from that world in New York, the theater world and the downtown sort of theater scene, and so I guess we didn't really have what you'd call like a Hollywood kind of life at all.

There was a kind of cultural life in New York that wasn't as solidified as it is now, it wasn't as money-driven. If you look at the size of the successful art galleries compared to the size of galleries now - there was no such thing as the Gagosian Gallery or Pace Gallery. But it was a time when magazines were a vital part of American life, and Esquire gave me a free pass to every world - I could get to the art world, the theater world, the movie world. It allowed you to roam through the cultural life of New York City.

I'm not a person who believes that Broadway is the only place. I think there's lots of work that goes on outside of Broadway and outside of New York that's better than anything Broadway has ever seen. But, it's historically the place. It's one of the centers of the universe, in many ways.

Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work.

I started in the theater world in New York City - and indie films - and I love the feeling of your head coming together and trying to tell a simple story, a small story, and just getting that vibe of storytelling without all the craziness of big budget.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

When you call someone and ask them to do something they've never done before, in different mediums I think they would be inclined to pass because they're afraid of the risk. But the creative people who populate the theater world love the challenge of new things.

I love the stage. I'm always sniffing around to see if there's something I can squidge in quickly.

Ivo van Hove is directing The Crucible, and rehearses in quite an unusual way. We started rehearsals last week and dived straight into the first act, like, five minutes after we all turned up. No warm-ups. We were very intensely immersed in that whole world on day one. It was quite surreal because I've never done any theater before.

I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, my children are in the theatrical profession.I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour the Tartar.