Hard Theater Quotes & Sayings

I had a hard time watching Wolf Creek. It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking. — Roger Ebert

But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater. — Stanley Elkin

Impressive," Court offered, gallantly bending to retrieve the shoe. "You should join the theater."
"Fuck you."
"I owed you that."
"Revenge is a dish best served with a side of handcuffs and a hard ass-fucking. Remember that."
Really is a dirty fighter. Goddamn. — Finn Marlowe

It's hard being a Broadway actor going into film where you have to tone everything down. In theater, everything you're taught is to be big and broad and make everyone feel like they are right next to you, even in the last row of seats. — Keke Palmer

Theater is hard. — Paul Dano

I passed a group of theater students or hippies (sometimes it's hard to tell) sitting in a circle under an oak tree. — Ellie Alexander

If you came into the theater believing in the talking snake, it's kind of hard to leave the theater still believing in the talking snake. — Bill Maher

It was never my dream to be famous. I didn't start acting to be a movie star. I started in the theater and my desire was to get better at my craft. It's still my desire. I don't consider myself a movie star, nor do I really have the desire to be one. I'm just an entertainer ... An actor who works hard at his craft. Whatever labels people give me, that's not really me or part of my process. — Denzel Washington

To give up a marriage - someone unmarried might imagine it's like giving up a seat in a theater, or sacrificing a trick in bridge for the possibility of better, later. But it is harsher than anyone could realize: a hot invisible fire, burning pieces of hope and fantasy, and charred bits of the past. It had to go, however, if something were to be built in its place. So I stood there and gave Buzz advice, and all I could think of were the automatons we had seen at Playland, moving beautifully in the wind, and the children who were taken behind the scenes on a tour and shown, to their surprise, the vast tangle of wires and switches that would be so hard to undo, and even worse, once undone, to bring to life again. — Andrew Sean Greer

I can't find a man I want, and I'm beginning to think the problem is me. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I'm holding out for something that doesn't even exist. She'd voiced her secret fear. Maybe grand passion was just a dream. With all the kissing she'd done in the past few months, she'd not once been overcome with desire. Her parents certainly hadn't had any great passion between them. Come to think of it, she wasn't sure she'd ever seen grand passion outside of a movie theater or a book. — Karen Marie Moning

For me, it was a lot of hard work doing theater eight nights a week around the country, going from job to job. — Brian Baumgartner

When people go to the theater, people say they want something different, but what they really want is something the same with slight permutations. To really not know what is going to happen next is a hard thing. — James Gunn

The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theater. The theater had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began rotting, the theater began showing second-run films, and then old movies, and finally foreign-language films. — Ed McBain

I started out doing theater and a soap in New York and that's ... sort of what I got stuck in. I was blessed enough to have long runs, and it's sort of hard sometimes then to get out. — Susan Sullivan

I'm used to working hard. Theater can be very grueling, and that's all I've ever known. It's what I've done for 20 years, which is crazy. — Sutton Foster

I don't know if people realize how hard I work, because sometimes people ask me for my secret. The truth is that I don't have any secrets apart from the fact that I've been directing theater and film for twenty years and trying at every stage to make my work better. — Lucy Walker

A hard-fought, well-fought, hairline-close game is as classical in sports as tragedy is in the theater. Victory is contained within defeat, and defeat is contained within victory. That's the way it is in the best of games. What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle. — Joe Paterno

The hardest thing in the world to do is to have someone in a seat in a theater laughing so hard that they're making weird sounds. — Adam McKay

When you've always worked hard in the theater, 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 because you're so used to gearing yourself up for that 8 O'clock curtain that to find any kind of really absorbing alternative is impossible . Nobody is as interesting to spend an evening with as a really good part. — Rex Harrison

The hard thing is getting people to come to the theater to see something, no matter if it's good or not. — Paul Feig

I love bad movies, whereas going to the theater for me is a painful experience. I think it's really hard to sit and watch actors do something live and have it not go well. — Zoe Kazan

Live theater is just an incredibly powerful medium, and I think anyone who goes, whether they know about it or not, if they see something that sort of fits with them, it's kind of hard to deny that they had a good time. — Harry Connick Jr.

It's hard to make a living in this business. Unions aren't as strong as they used to be. For a journeyman actor - someone who doesn't have a famous name but has consistent work in theater or film or TV - it has become harder to get through, harder to raise a family. — Annette Bening

It's really hard to say how long the show will last and will continue. I hope it lasts for a very long time. As long as kids watch it, anyway. But beyond this, sure, I would love to be doing film. I'd love to be doing more theater and perhaps even writing. — Steve Burns

You know, if a TV show dropped into my lap out of the blue, I would have a hard time turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV. — Laurie Metcalf

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there. — Cate Blanchett

Why didn't you ask me out?" Layla blurted, suddenly needing to know. She bit the inside of her lip, cursing her impulsive tongue. Her heart beat erratically, thumping hard against her ribs. "Two summers ago when we volunteered at the theater? I kept thinking you might." His hands paused on a spool of twine as he looked at her, his eyes somber. "I wanted to. But I was coming off a difficult relationship - I needed some time." Regret laced his voice. "Chloe Peterson." He nodded. She'd seen them around town for about a year. The grapevine claimed she'd cheated on him with Chris Geiger, but who knew? "I was about to ask you out," he said. "But before I could ... " "Jack." His eyes skimmed over her face. "You have no idea how many times I've regretted waiting." Her face warmed under his perusal. Her pulse skittered. "Wonder what would've happened." One corner of his lips tipped up as a look of serenity passed over his face, displacing the regret. "Who knows. Maybe we'd be engaged for real. — Denise Hunter

Look beyond that light,' says my father. 'Look hard and you'll see people filing into the theater. You'll see ushers run up and down the aisles; people talk, programs rustle-you'll hear a murmur. When the lights start to dim, the murmur rises, and then, just a moment before the curtain goes up, the noise stops-everyone in the house holds their breath, everyone knows what is going to happen. This is the moment I've always loved most:the anticipation of magic, the expectation of illusion. — Elena Gorokhova

Men cannot be men - much less good or heroic men - unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors — Jack Donovan

I started out a die-hard New Yorker but really grew to love working in Los Angeles. Even though I originally wanted to do theater, TV presented more opportunities for me, which led me out west. — Becki Newton

We're trying to get as many people to become interested in seeing it, but if you like the theater and you're interested in seeing what live theater looks like in New York, you probably already set your DVR. It's gonna be a hard ask to get a bunch of college-basketball fans to tune in for three hours to watch the Tonys. — Neil Patrick Harris

I had a hard-scrabble childhood with my parents. I have a lot of baggage. To come down to the footlights and accept the audience's affection inside a Broadway theater - that didn't come easily to me. — Bette Midler

You can work really hard on your physicality, on your craft, on the films you do. You can choose the best of directors, the best of productions, get the best technicians, you can put your entire body and soul into the making of a film, but at the end of the day, it all depends on the mood of that one audience member that goes into that theater. — Abhishek Bachchan

I had done a lot of plays, particularly at my own theater in LA, and it was the first time in my theatrical life where I didn't feel that my role was also to keep everybody else working hard. — Gregory Harrison

I think my best teacher and my best study was theater in general. It taught me a lot of patience and a lot of hard work, and I think that theater teaches you that you've got to know your stuff because you only get one chance. — Chelsea Kane

I never want movie theaters go away. It is the greatest time out on the town. You go out, it's a great place to go, great location, great hang, great date, good place to be with friends. But as an actor who works hard at making movies, I am glad that no matter what people can see your movie on. It's hard to keep a theater for long time; there are so many movies, so when you leave a theater, you're just glad there's a life for your movie. — Adam Sandler

The theater commitment is hard, especially in conjunction with a television commitment. That's a big, long commitment. — Sarah Paulson

Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: potato chips, croutons, crunchy peanut butter. Any food that was more than infinitesimally, protozoically, spicy or tangy or salty or acidic: pesto or Worcestershire sauce, wasabi or anchovies, tomato juice or movie-theater popcorn. Certain pamphlets and magazines whose paper carried a caustic wafting chemical scent she could taste as she turned the pages. Perfume. Incense. Library books. Long hours of easy conversation. The ability to lick an envelope without worrying that the glue had irritated her mouth. The knowledge that if she heard a song she liked, she could sing along to it in all her dreadful jubilant tunelessness. The faith that if she bit her tongue, she would soon feel better rather than worse. — Kevin Brockmeier

The theater was my first training ground. It taught me discipline, dedication and appreciation of hard work. — Ben Vereen

The filmmakers aren't running the studios anymore. Sometimes people who like films are making them, but by and large, they have to go report quarterly earnings and all that stuff. The competition is so huge that it's very hard to get people to show up to see any movie in the theater, much less an original one that isn't a version of something else they saw. — Tom Hanks

How hard is it, when everything encourages us to sleep, though we may look about us with conscious, clinging eyes, to wake and yet look about us as in a dream, with eyes that no longer know their function and whose gaze is turned inward. — Antonin Artaud

Actors and writers need to come back to the theater because it's a place where you can learn. You have to pay your dues, and people who haven't paid their dues in the theater, I think, have a hard time creating a whole career. — Joanne Woodward

I was the illegitimate child of the legitimate theater. I had no training. I came from downtown rock and roll, and when I came in and auditioned for the Broadway revival of 'Hair,' I had no eyebrows - kind of a Bowie-esque glimmer kid. And it was hard representing the flower power era when we were stone cold punks. — Annie Golden

The theater is so disappointing, really, that it's hard to go again and again. It's just too heartbreaking. I'd rather watch football or play a game or read. — John Malkovich

I think everybody should act! I would encourage everybody to do one thing, join a theater class or something. It's so good to take a character that you think is wildly different from who you are, and to try to relate to that person and become that person is very helpful. It's hard to articulate what you learn, but you can feel the effect of these characters that you play and take with you. — Ryan Gosling