Theatrical Passion Quotes

I feel like with acting it's not like you make a choice - it's kind of in you and you have to do it or you wouldn't be able to survive.

Oh, God, I would love to go and do a play someplace.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

There's nobody who loves being around actors working more than David Mamet, especially actors bringing his tremendous dialogue to life. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave.

From the time I was twelve I was dancing for bread and butter, but in my heart I was always an actress.

I think I'll always be a theater gypsy at heart.

My parents thought, 'Oh, my God! What's wrong with him? He's possessed or something.' All of a sudden, I stood up and started saying my lines. From then on, that was it. I knew there was something special about the theater for me, something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.

I got cast in a school play and I fell in love with that. I felt comfortable on stage and found out it was a brilliant way of expressing myself and I was happy and I could do it.

I love to act and that's sort of my first love. That's what I started out doing.

I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.

The actor must be full of passion. If he's too cool he's better off as the manager of a company, not someone who appears on the stage.

Acting has been my lover and best friend. My confidant and my tormentor. It has given me support and broken my heart and mended it.

Acting became my best friend. When I auditioned to get into college, the teacher said you belong here, Mr. Klugman, and to hear that word belong - I never belonged anywhere before - and suddenly I belonged in acting and it was so comfortable and I loved it.

I do feel almost violent when I'm watching things that I don't think are good enough. I get furious for the audience. I want to say to them, 'This play is not supposed to be like this. They've got it completely wrong. You should be electrified by this.'

I definitely knew that I loved acting from the very beginning. I was such a ham growing up. Wherever the camera was, I wanted to be right in front of it.

I went to school to play sports, but I got involved in theatre in college kind of by mistake. I ended up taking an acting class almost just to get rid of an arts requirement, but I wound up in this wonderful acting class with this teacher named Alma Becker who really saved my life. I was just kind of this knucklehead kid from DC and I was in and out of trouble all of the time. I took a theatre class and she really discovered something in me and I absolutely fell in love with it.

As an actor, variety is the spice of life. I love theatre… it's what I enjoy the most. But a bit of TV, a bit of film, a bit of stage - what more could you ask for?

Acting has been my passion from the minute I started. I was pretty young when I wanted to be a doctor, but when I started doing theater work as a freshman in high school, the first time I hit the stage I was like, If I can do this every day, life won't get any better!

I love the theater and I particularly love the classical theater and I love doing Shakespeare. It pays the soul, but it doesn't pay the rent.

I don't act to live. I live to act.

I did The Seagull, the Chekhov play, on Broadway, a couple of years ago, and I had done it in London, and I became completely obsessed with the character, Nina, that I played in that. She's an actress. I couldn't find a play after that, that I wanted to do, because I couldn't think of doing anything else. Every part is a disappointment, once you've done that part.

Occasionally, I have time to go to the theater, and I think for a minute, 'Man, I'd really love to be doing a play right now.' Because I loved doing plays when I was doing them. Then I think, 'I want to do it right now, but will I want to do that Sunday matinee in six weeks?'

Acting is a child's prerogative. Children are born to act. Usually, people grow up and out of it. Actors always seem to me to be people who never quite did grow out of it.

When I was about 16, I did a Neil LaBute play called 'A Gaggle of Saints' from a collection of plays called 'Bash' - very violent story about a young Mormon who goes to Central Park with his friend and beats up a gay guy. But it was the first thing I had ever done, and I thought, "God, this is fun! This is far more fun than anything else I've been doing at school. I want to stick with it."

I can't imagine myself not being an actor.