Theater Actors Quotes & Sayings

Actors are all about entrances, but writers are all about exits. — Vincent H. O'Neil

What's wrong with actors?"
"They quote poetry. A girl has to be crazy to believe one," I told him. "It's far too easy for an actor to give you a good line."
"You're quick to judge."
"No," I argued. "I've had experience with theater types. After a while they can't tell real from unreal. They believe their own creation of themselves and can't understand why everyone else isn't convinced they're wonderful."
He jumped down from the limb, then stared up at me, his eyes sparking with anger. "It's efficient, I guess, judging an individual by a group. You don't waste any time trying to know somebody."
But I don't want to know you! I thought as I watched Mike walk away. I can't risk knowing you. — Elizabeth Chandler

When you're working on a film, it's not theater; you don't have a few weeks of rehearsal. A lot of times you are showing up on set, and you've never been to the place; you've never met the other actors you're working with. — Ben Schnetzer

So many actors started on soap operas. So yeah, I'd graduated Julliard and done some theater. I've done a few guest spots on TV but nothing that long-term. I did a little 'E.R.' back when it was on, and a pilot for 'Cold Case.' — Finn Wittrock

If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing. — Enrico Colantoni

I've seen productions where it feels like the actors are just tired and want to go home. That is one of the challenges doing theater - especially a long production - how to keep it alive for yourself and the audience. — Gillian Anderson

[To actors on opening night:] You have had good equipment to work with. You've had a theater with everything you needed, and you are involved with the play; but all the way through you have been handicapped. One essential has been denied you. Tonight the audience is there; now they are sitting out front; you have everything you need ... — Hallie Flanagan

In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. — Diego Luna

Once I went to film school, I realized that film directing was actually much better than theater directing, because you kind of get to stay in control of it all the way through. You don't relinquish the piece to the actors like you have to in theater; you stay in control through the very end. — Mark Waters

Too often in their church life people adopt an attitude of the theater, imagining the preacher is an actor and they his critics, praising and blaming the performances. Actually, the people are the actors on the stage of life. The preacher is merely the prompter, reminding the people of their lost lines. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The TV schedule is fantastic. It allows you to have a life. Theater actors are so disciplined - especially if you're doing musicals, you have to be in shape physically, mentally, and have to be on your game all the time. That's exhausting. On TV, especially a sitcom, you have a lot of free time to play. — Neil Patrick Harris

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. — William Shakespeare

The taboo for straight actors playing gay is gone ... My mother was squirming a bit in the theater because she comes from a different generation. — Dean Cain

I'm sort of one of those weird actors who whenever I do a play, I think, 'Oh, we should film this,' as opposed to have to belt it out of ourselves in a theater auditorium. — Clive Owen

I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness - there's nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you've ever had. — Laura Benanti

One can use standard principles and textbooks in educating people for law, medicine, architecture, chemistry or almost any other profession - but not for the theater. For, in most professions, every practitioner uses the same tools and techniques, while the actor's chief instrument is himself. And since no two persons are alike, no universal rule is applicable to any two actors in exactly the same way. — Sanford Meisner

Tim Robbins had real confidence in college. He literally stole actors from the theater department at UCLA to be in his plays. The department heads got so mad at him. — Daphne Zuniga

In high school, theater was all I ever wanted to do. I didn't see that I was going to set it aside for so many years and take a right turn into television. Of course, wanting to do theater is something you hear a lot from actors. I think I've been embarrassed to be in that big cliche. — Mare Winningham

My parents are actors as well, so I grew up around that world. It was always a very romantic, mythical world. They did a lot of theater, so to me an actor was getting to come backstage and dressing room mirrors with bulbs around them and trying on people's costumes. It was very exciting to me as a child. — Phoebe Fox

By 1950, Brennan was settling into a schedule that saw him making three films a year, giving him more time on his ranch and with a new business he started in Joseph, a 487-seat movie theater that opened on July 27, 1950. It was housed in a Quonset hut made out of surplus war materials also used to build the civic center. "The reason he got the theater built," Mike recalled, "was because the civic center was the same size, and they [Frank McCully and Walter] got the chance to buy two of them for half the price." At the theater's grand opening, actors Chill Wills and Forrest Tucker said a few words and signed autographs, and Joseph's mayor and other local dignitaries attended the event. A La Grande radio station broadcast the event. Curtain Call at Cactus Creek was the feature, following a musical short with the Nat King Cole trio. — Carl Rollyson

The Australian film industry is a small industry, so you have to really be flexible within working in different mediums. A lot of actors work in theater, film, and television, because there's not much opportunity in terms of employment there. — Deborah Mailman

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films. — Julie Taymor

Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself. — Al Pacino

I'm a theater actress and I thrive on working with other actors, and you can't be even a smidge bad, when you're acting with Charlie [Sheen]. He's just so natural, so present and so good that you have to step up to his level, or else. — Daniela Bobadilla

People think that theater actors are too big for the camera. It's like, 'No, we're actors and we adjust for our audience.' — Megan Hilty

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. — Diego Luna

A farmer's work in many ways is like setting a stage. In theater, stage managers lay out furniture and props, set up lights, and clean to get a set ready for actors to take over and create a show. Farmers plow, fertilize, set up irrigation systems and fences, and otherwise prep the stage of their farms for the real actors -- the sun and the life within the seeds and animals -- to create the show. — Ben Hartman

My mom always wanted me to be an actor. And I started going to theater and going on auditions young. I only realized about five years ago that I actually didn't want to be an actor. — Angelina Jolie

There wasn't even a movie theater in the town. Nothing. Not even any fast food chains of any kind. Regardless, I knew that I was going to leave and become an actor, and be in film and television, and I've done it. — Kristen Hager

I learned how to turn it on and turn it off. You learn that in theater, too, but for film work, I learned from doing 'Henry,' I learned how to leave work at work and go home. There's always spillover. Actors speak of this. — Michael Rooker

I love Back Stage. I have lots of theater friends and actors who depend on Back Stage. — Anurag Kashyap

Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas filed along it in their ordinary clothes, exciting no emotion, no laughter, no reverie. He had never been curious, he said, when he lived in Rouen, to go to the theater and see the actors from Paris. He did not know how to swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and he could not explain to her, one day, a riding term she had come upon in a novel.

But shouldn't a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him. — Gustave Flaubert

As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional. — Richard Foreman

Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer. — Betty Buckley

In all of time, all of space, there will only be one you. How can you be anything but perfect? As you are. Mad, sad, glad. You are amazing. — Cindy Marcus

I think theater and church are so relatable because it's traditional call-and-response in the way that an audience interacts with the actors. — Danielle Brooks

I wanted to be in film. I wanted to be a film student, possibly be a director or cinematographer, not an actor. That was my goal. I didn't believe I had the physical beauty that I'd seen projected and advertised in movies, in theater. It just wasn't for me. — Pam Grier

That's what I tell young actors. "You don't have to compromise. Go do some theater and wait for an appropriate role." — Denzel Washington

I like to think of myself as some of the Scotch tape that holds things together - I'm very handy to have around. But all that actors really need is a bare stage. Lighting is just one of the luxuries of the theater. — Jean Rosenthal

The most reliable pleasure afforded by theater is the intermission. — Mason Cooley

Film is mostly a visual medium, and so the director has much more control in terms of painting pictures and painting a performance. For theater, the director does everything he can and then says, 'Out you go,' and the actors are in charge of that stage every night. — David Lindsay-Abaire

I didn't grow up knowing actors' names, and my parents weren't theater people. — Carrie Coon

I'm one of those pathetic actors who will say yes to every play reading just because I do miss the stage so much. What I really miss about the theater is that in the end, it's yours to give. In television and film, it's yours to do and someone else's to take and someone else's to give. As much as I love television - the biggest luxury of all is to know that you have a job to go to - I do miss that connection and having that power over my own performance on stage. — Julianna Margulies

I would absolutely recommend for actors to start in the theater because it establishes a foundation in your craft that you can build off of. — Freddy Rodriguez

Something like the alleyway scene, where it's like a mini one-act play and you run the whole 18 pages of it, it's so much easier to get lost in it. That's why actors love doing theater so much, I guarantee you. It's refreshing to be able to do something where you don't have to be stopped every two seconds, and you can just play it out and it's done. — Dylan O'Brien

I want to keep working. I want to step away from young adult fiction. I want to do theater periodically - Farragut North reminded me how great it is. I started out in theater. I trained in theater and then I kind of fell into film and TV. I want to work with interesting artists, talented actors, talented directors, and talented scripts. Not necessarily leading roles. — Max Irons

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

Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be. — Rhys Ifans

I did a lot of theater in school. I thought maybe I wanted to go to law school or be a judge or a politician. And then I just kind of got smitten by the process of rehearsal and working with other actors and those kinds of challenges. And then comedy. — Rashida Jones

A lot of actors say that theater's the thing for them. And that's great, and I'm not one to speak with any authority about it because of not having done it properly. For me, movies are what I love. — Christian Bale

I wasn't a trained actor, I was trained in musical comedy theater, and when you do that, the audience is completely part of the thing. It's like Elizabethan theater. You play the scene, and then you turn - the audience is part of it. — Christopher Walken

In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does an actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd. — Karl Kraus

I fell in love with film. I didn't start out to be a film actor. I wanted to be a theater actor. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I felt a certain modicum of success because I had been paid well to be an actor for the first time in my life, but I felt like I had done adolescent work on the show, and stepping into the New York theater arena was the first time I felt like I'd come into my own. I felt like I was proving myself in a gladiatorial arena. — Chris Carmack

All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. — Leo Tolstoy

Typically, among the audience members joining the actors, the director, Ann Ciccolella and myself, about half of these theater goers have read the novel [Anthem], and half have not read it. That is interesting. — Jeff Britting

I don't think actors are to blame for poor writing. The culture changes first, and the theater follows it. In the case of the movies, it's the same thing. — Christopher Reeve

I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors. — Ellen McLaughlin

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through. — Sam Mendes

In my theater days I assumed that you had to get rid of yourself to do a character well, and I don't think I was a very good actor when I did that. — Charlie Day

The cast, staff, and crew of a live theater work together toward a common goal: a good performance. Thus, theater is necessarily a group effort. However, it is never a group effort of vague fellow committee members, but of associated autocrats-a playwright, a producer, a director, a stage manager, designers, and, above all, actors. Each accommodates the others, and may overlap others in function when necessary. But each autocrat assumes distinct responsibilities and accepts them completely. — Laurence Sterne

When most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disaster porn entertains the culturally witless for 90 minutes at a time. Pfaugh. The word 'theater' has grandeur. Power. Back to its ancient Grecian origins, it means 'the seeing place.' A stage upon which actors and actresses use fiction to show us truths. — Mark Waid

Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual. — Pedro Almodovar

Everybody has his own theater, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwrite, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain. — Julius Charles Hare

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it. — Tim DeKay

My preference is live performance. Because you get the feedback. There's an energy. It's live theater. That's why I think actors like that. You know, musicians need it, comedians definitely need it. It doesn't matter what size and what club, whether it's 30 people in the club or 2,000 in a hall or a theater. It's live, it's symbiotic, you need it. — Robin Williams

But there were other great writers who had done all these things. What set Shakespeare apart ... even from other greats, was his generosity: his invitation, even insistence,for others to join him in the act of imagining ... His reticence [to add stage directions] made his works wonderfully elastic. It also made them demnding
sometimes maddeningly so
for directors and actors who had to figure out at every turn why these words and no others needed to be said right here and now. But Shakespeare was also demanding of his audiences: 'Yes,' you could almost hear him say, 'you are sitting in a fairly barren wooden theater. But dream yourselves to France. To a seacoast in Bohemia. To a magic-haunted island in a tempest-tossed sea. I dare you.' -Kate Stanley — Jennifer Lee Carrell

Theater is a really exciting place to return to all the time because it's incredible training for an actor. — Zoe Lister-Jones

When you left this one theater in Norfolk, the actors had to walk through the lobby to get out to the street. People would see you and say nice things, tell you that you were good. So, pretty soon I'm pretending to forget things backstage, going through the lobby a couple of times. — Stephen Furst

The general conception that all actors are born exhibitionists is far from the truth. They are quite the opposite. They are shy, frightened people in hiding from themselves- people who have found a way of concealing their secret by footlights, make up and the parts they play. Their own self rejection is what has made most of them actors. — Moss Hart

Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic. — Jennifer Stone

Never stand still. Only stand still enough to learn, and once you stop learning in that stance, move off. Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get. If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets. But be around actors because that is where you will primarily learn. — Ed Asner

'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust. — Tracy Letts

My strength as an actor is in the theater - I know that about myself. Some actors get onstage and vanish, but I'm much better there than I am on screen. — Stacy Keach

Being a theater actor, I've done a lot of plays where I've seen someone else play the same role in another production. Especially with the classics: Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams. — Jacki Weaver

Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible. — Neil Gaiman

Actors are as anxious about the state of audiences as aviators are over weather conditions. — Katharine Cornell

When student-actors see people and the way they behave when together, see the color of the sky, hear the sounds in the air, feel the ground beneath them and the wind on their faces, they get a wider view of their personal world and development in the theater is quickened. The world provides the material for the theater and artistic growth develops hand-in-hand with one's recognition of it and one's self within it. — Viola Spolin

I came out of school just at the time regional theater was first expanding. All of a sudden, lots of new companies needed actors. — Charles Kimbrough

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves ... — Susan Cooper

Sir Larry could be very strict and a disciplinarian, too. He had many faces; he wore many hats. But, ultimately, he loved the theater and he loved actors. — Derek Jacobi

We know the original relation of the theater and the cult of the Dead: the first actors separated themselves from the community by playing the role of the Dead: to make oneself up was to designate oneself as a body simultaneously living and dead: the whitened bust of the totemic theater, the man with the painted face in the Chinese theater, the rice-paste makeup of the Indian Katha-Kali, the Japanese No mask ... Now it is this same relation which I find in the Photograph; however 'lifelike' we strive to make it (and this frenzy to be lifelike can only be our mythic denial of an apprehension of death), Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead. — Roland Barthes

You create this situation where you are so dependent on each other. That's especially true for film. In theater, the actor has much more say, much more control, for better or worse. — Susan Sarandon

That's what I love most about writers
they're such lousy actors. — Vincent H. O'Neil

When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out. — Kurt Fuller

London's Windmill Theater grew famous for its nude tableaux. During the 1940 and 1950, this theater overcame the objections of censors by agreeing that none of its naked actors would move any part of his/her body. — Lynda Bellingham

Actors are different. Some actors play themselves very successfully, but I come from the theater. Having done Shakespeare, we sometimes did three or four characters in the same play. — Stellan Skarsgard

All four of the actors in 'You're the Worst,' we all have strong theater backgrounds. We all play off of each other in that way that you would in theater. You kind of are up for anything out of the blue happening and getting it on film, you know? We're all just open to playing. — Kether Donohue

The way I see the job, my definition of it, is to create characters to the best of your ability and then fit into what's trying to be accomplished in the general framework of the film. I think that's whether you're doing this- even if you're doing musical theater. That's what I think an actors job is. I don't know. I like to think what an actors job is is to create characters. — Anton Yelchin

Anyone can do theater, even actors. And, theater can be done everywhere, even in a theater. — Augusto Boal

Reading Dostoyevsky is like sitting in the front row of a theater, where the actors' spit lands on your face. — Charles Baxter

In the theater, actors are the essential element of the work. In a film, it's a real collaboration - not that theater isn't, because it is - but it's a collaboration to such an extent that you can give a performance in film that sometimes you look at and you go, "Well, that's not the performance I was trying to give at all." — Karen Allen

If you want to be a theater actor, where do you live now? Young actors struggle on a Broadway salary. A lot of them live in shoe boxes; some of them are literally three to a shoebox. New York has gotten prohibitively expensive. — Stephen Spinella

A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene he heard the void filled with applause and, through a rift in a side scene, saw the simple body before which he had acted magically deformed, the void of faces breaking at all points and falling asunder into busy groups. — James Joyce

We are in danger, all of us, and I will give you an example why - a journalist I knew years ago. He was a good journalist. He went around the world and recorded what he saw and came to various conclusions. He said, Paris is this and London is that - and Greece is worth a couple of days. He felt two days was enough to give him an understanding of Greece. What that statement reveals is that the basis of our Western culture now, and of professional man, is middle-class. The middle class makes statements and knows nothing. You and I are the middle class and must think of ourselves as middle-class. We are middleclass actors, middle-class journalists, middle-class plumbers and morticians. The creation of the modern theater took a genius like Ibsen. — Stella Adler

Here in America, every single actor, since they were little boys, they sing and dance and perform like angels. We don't do that. We are actors who work in a theater in very classic performances or plays. — Javier Camara

All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self ... What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself - a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required ... I am a theater and nothing more than a theater. — Philip Roth

I started off doing plays as a theater actor. But I never thought of it in terms of it leading anywhere. I was just trying to be the best actor that I could be in the context of what I was doing. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I didn't know what the path was that I wanted to be as an actor, to be honest. I've been doing a lot of theater since I was a kid, so I was just sort of taking opportunities. — Guy Pearce

Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy. — Thomas Jane