Theatrical Work Quotes

Acting requires emotional flexibility and demands, and directing is more cerebral and managerial and a tactical kind of thing.

'Grease' was my Broadway debut. That was eye-opening. At the same time, it was very familiar. It was a Broadway show, but it's kind of the same as doing a show in Minnesota. It's the same type of rehearsal process. You are doing 8 shows a week, but I worked at a theatre in Minnesota that did 11 shows a week.

I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.

I'll always be an Essex girl at heart but I've matured and I've evolved and with my work I'm in the West End all the time.

When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices.

Acting is a weird, kind of alienating job because you're in an isolated place. Even if you're working with a lot of other people, you're kind of alienated. Actors say that a lot, and I kind of find that to be true.

Well, I've been acting for 50 years now, professionally. I've been acting a lot longer. My mother reckons I was acting when I got out of the womb. But because I've been working in the theater, I've probably only done about 25 movies but I've done more than 100 plays.

The play is one of the very few pieces of great dramatic and comic writing that I have read in a long, long time. I was drawn to it because of the power of the writing, which gives me the actor a chance to explore many facets of myself.

Well, I've always thought that my career was in England, really. I used to do more in the theatre, and I felt that I should be there. It's not far is it? It's amazing the way that special FX have taken a quantum leap in what they're capable of doing.

I have worked alone and with a cast and enjoy the process both ways. There is more back-and-forth with a full cast, and you can feed off the other actors' performance.

Glenn Close is a living icon. You look at the work, and I think it's wild, because she thinks some of her best work was in Dangerous Liaisons and that's what I believe as well.

When you've always worked hard in the theatre, you find that, when you stop playing, at the end of a run, the evenings seem very long indeed. You have to find something to keep yourself occupied with because you're so used to gearing yourself up to that eight o'clock curtain, but to find any kind of real, absorbing alternative is impossible. Nobody is as interesting to spend an evening with as a really good part.

I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.

'Tender' is my most strongly autobiographical play.

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".

I work through the actors, and the more successful I am, the less my work is apparent.

I had the advantage, that I know Swedish. So I had the Swedish book and I had a lot of English translations, and German translations, and I did everything to make the best English translation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie I could. And then, there I went. "Oh! I think she's thinking this, but I think she should say it!" And so on. It's wonderful to do that.

I love being on Broadway and it's awesome and a dream come true but also it's about the work and making sure you're doing what you're doing right.

I'm very much interested in doing actual theater.

I just love that I get to play dress-up for a living.

The actor's role in the community is quite unlike anyone else's. Businessmen, for example, don't take their clothes off or cry in front of strangers in the course of their work. Actors do.

Everybody works the same, but the preparation very often may be different. You cannot work differently. You have to say the words that were written on the page, and you have to make your marks. That's the work.

When I look at the five thousand garments and then all this music hall work, I ask myself how I could have done it all. I was a phenomenon!

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.

I never felt that I should have taken a 'regular job;' I was always lucky enough to be in regular employment as an actress.