Theatrical Heritage Quotes

Ever since I was little it was programmed into me that London is where great theatre occurs and all the big shows you love start there.

Going back to Georgiana Drew and John Drew, and my great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore, and it was such a sort of circus of odd, interesting people that loved acting.

I come from a very vaudevillian family.

Our heritage as actors goes back thousands of years, and we have to feel as comfortable in the clothes, and the language of Sophocles as we do in our sneakers.

My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?

The theatre, our theatre, comes from the Greeks.

Both of my parents have been actors; there were a lot of show tunes on in the car all of the time. I grew up with that.

One has a sort of spiritual obligation to go back to the source material of the literature, to make contact with one of the seminal plays of the modern theater.

My grandparents - both of my mother's parents - were actors, and they ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company, through the town of Reading, where I come from.

If you're a classical actor, every Shakespearean part you play, you then say, 'McKellen did it this way,' and, 'Jacobi did it this way.' There's a whole list of Oliviers and people, whether you play Hamlet or Richard II or Richard III, any of those roles. And I found that a bit when I did 'La Cage.' It didn't bother me one bit.

Theater is an old thing. It's thousands of years old. TV isn't. Film isn't. We're doing a really old thing.

I played Nina in 'The Seagull,' and I remember thinking it's incredible to see all the actresses in the past that've played her. It's quite strengthening. You feel a part of the family of actresses going through and giving something of themselves to the role.

The heritage of a British actor revolves around the challenges of playing the classic roles to meet certain levels of success as an actor. In America, the heritage of an actor is based on cinema mainly.

We had our British background of traditional theatre behind us.

I just love the history of acting. It's such a beautiful craft and you absolutely get out of it what you put into it.

[Greek] Theater started off and used masks and Kabuki, in the East, they used mask-work. And then, Commedia dell'arte in Italy and then, you know, we're part of an acting tradition and, and performance capture is no different.

No, it’s very comforting actually, to know that you’re sitting in a long legacy of actresses who’ve played the role. I’m absolutely all for absorbing all of those influences, so you understand the pedigree of the part as much as you understand the figure in history… because you are playing the part. You don’t say: “Gosh, I want to play Peter Sellers…” because you can sort of do that in your own bathroom.

Now the Gielgud Theater is a very famous old theater, because it was originally called the Globe, and the Globe is where my mother made her very first professional appearance in London, was at the Globe Theater.

Whatever part I'm playing, I always carry with me something that's been used by an illustrious predecessor. I'm a great believer in a touching of hands. I have daggers belonging to Henry Irving and Sarah Siddons.

I grew up around the theatre. My mother is an actress. I would fall asleep on tons of theatre chairs. It's in my blood; it's in my spirit and my fabric of who I am.

I always think the great parts outlive the actors that play them and that's a stage tradition, that goes back hundreds of years and it should be that way.