Quotes & Sayings About Theater And Acting
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Top Theater And Acting Quotes
The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe. — P.S. Baber
I went to performing arts high school, and I took dance and acting every day. Then, I went to Marymount Manhattan College and I have a B.A. in acting, with a concentration in theater performance and a minor in musical theater. I studied there for three years. — Jenna Ushkowitz
I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual. — Michael Shannon
It's rare when you're actually making a movie and it feels like you're watching a movie in the theater. You feel like a surfer in a wave, catching the wave, going for it every time, there's electricity in the room, it doesn't feel like acting, you ride the wave. — Jon Lovitz
I left the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin in 2004, and I did five years of theater after that. — Aidan Turner
The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience, there is no theater. Everything done is ultimately for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, fellow players, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful. — Viola Spolin
Because of my background in theater and radio acting, I knew that I could make a living as an actor. — Casey Kasem
In my early childhood, I was a performer by nature. I used to do puppet shows as a kid and entertain kids in classes and the teachers would make it a point that I was the entertainer of the class, but only after high school and in college that I started doing theater and acting classes, because I thought it would be fun. — Michael Jai White
When I first started out in Houston, it was theater or bust. And I loved it. I still love it. And then I went to undergraduate and graduate school for acting. — Jim Parsons
I had always been the theater nerd at Northwestern University. I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche - a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress. I wanted more than that, and I had always loved politics, so I ended up changing my major completely, and double-majoring in theater and international relations. — Meghan Markle
In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control. — Susan Sarandon
I consider being a performer work. I come from a theater family; I've been an actor all my life. I started acting when I was a kid, and I've earned a living as an artist all my life. It's my job in the sense that it's everything I am, the only thing I know how to do. I literally do not have qualifications to do anything else on this planet. Seriously, it's scary. [But] I don't consider it a job [because] it's my religion - it's my faith, it's my family, it's everything to me. — Torquil Campbell
I worked in theater my whole life. My mom was a drama teacher at my middle school. In high school, I was Drama Club President every year, and then I auditioned for conservatory acting programs. — Jenn Proske
I transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like, chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it. — Tatiana Maslany
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it. — Jeremy Irons
The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive. — James Lipton
I fell in love with acting at a very young age, when I was 9 years old and started doing community theater. As far as wanting to make a profession out of it, I was about 13 or 14. When I first saw Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", when I saw Harrison Ford, I knew I wanted to be in movies. — Guy Wilson
I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn't like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies. — Willem Dafoe
Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree. — Eddie Redmayne
My parents were involved in community theater in New Jersey. Instead of hiring a baby sitter, they would take me with them. So my love of acting seeped in from watching my parents and seeing them having fun. — Jane Krakowski
I do it because I love acting, I love working, and whether it's radio, television, films, theater, I don't care as long as I can get out there and do it. — Joan Collins
Acting as a career is a long term thing and that work is kind of progressive and you can build on a career. It's part of the great tradition of the theater to me. — Sigourney Weaver
Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark. — Anna Deavere Smith
He told her that he had got into acting by way of his religion. His family belonged to some Christian sect Greta had never heard of. This sect was not numerous but very rich, or at least some of them were. They had built a church with a theater in it in a town on the prairie. That was where he started to act before he was ten years old. They did parables from the Bible but also present day, about the awful things that happened to people who didn't believe what they did. His family was very proud of him and of course so he was of himself. He wouldn't dream of telling them all that went on when the rich converts came to renew their vows and get revitalized in their holiness. Anyway he really liked getting all the approval and he liked the acting. Till one day he just got the idea that he could do the acting and not go through all that church stuff. — Alice Munro
Each form of the acting is different. I think it keeps your mind active. TV, film and theater are different disciplines, as are independent films, opposed to studio films. There are differences in the size and the genre, or a period drama as opposed to a contemporary drama, or the types of characters. — Luke Evans
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
I grew up in baseball stadiums. It was my two brothers and baseball around me all the time. I knew nothing about film or acting or theater when I was young! — Stephanie Sigman
Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe that lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you not only have the music, but you've got costume, story, acting, orchestra. There's a lot to take in. — Stephen Sondheim
It never occurred to me that I was a leading man until I was 19 years old. I had been acting since I was 10, so that's nine years and 30 or 40 plays, in school and summer stock, professional theater, too. — Christopher Reeve
Theater will always be my first love. The time and dedication that goes into the rehearsal process with the cast and crew is something that TV/Movie acting does not offer. — April Parker Jones
I was real into theater, and then I tried soccer, acting and ballet. Both my parents didn't want a child-star model, so I didn't get into modeling until I was 14. — Emily Ratajkowski
I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra. — Stephen Sondheim
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
When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way. — Edward Norton
I studied theater in college, and I absolutely knew that I loved acting, and I knew that I loved theater. — Hill Harper
For me, I can't live without acting or drama and writing - I also run a theater company. — Tom Cullen
I'm terrified of being too famous. What I'm really afraid of is that the audiences will go into the theater and not be able to forget that it's me, that fame will stand in the way of my acting. I want to keep being able to change into different shapes and different personalities. — Noomi Rapace
Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it's just an extension of childhood play ... Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don't need any director telling them, 'You really have to believe in it.' They believe in it completely. — Viggo Mortensen
I dropped out in middle school. I dropped out in, towards the beginning of the ninth grade. And then I started studying -I started taking acting classes at a, well first I was like in a community theater at that time in Torrance, California, so I finished up like my season with that community theater just acting in, you know, acting in a small part on this play or a big part on that play or a stage manager or assistant stage manager in another play. — Quentin Tarantino
I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances. — W.S. Gilbert
I started as an actor, then became a theater director. I loved acting but didn't feel as confident as I needed to be, so I started directing theater; then I played in some movies, and then I felt the need to do my own stuff. — Baltasar Kormakur
Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation. — Michael Moriarty
My first love was acting. I went to Sidney Poitier films as a kid. I sat in the theater and dreamed of being an actor. — Carl Weathers
I ask the stunt guys, all the time, to do as much of the stunts as possible, and they let me do a lot. They don't throw me through windows because they're not allowed to and I probably wouldn't say yes to that. But I have done a lot of physical acting before, in theater, so that comes very natural to me. — Casper Crump
Everything I've ever learned about acting - and I went to theater school - was about playing what the character wants and throwing yourself fully into going after what the character wants. — J. August Richards
I always thought I would be a marine biologist because I love the sea - but considering the fact that I've always loved acting and the theater, I don't think I ever gave anything else much of a chance. — Renee O'Connor
Doing a musical is not just acting. It's total theater. When you have to justify the enormous projection of energy it takes to just go into song and dance, you realized why it's such a humbling experience every time you go into a show. — Donna McKechnie
I'm from Denver, and there is really nothing acting-wise to do there except for theater. I did everything I could get my hands on until I was able to make it to L.A. — Madisen Beaty
A lot of the best acting training I had was in junior high and high school. We had very demanding directors and did real plays. You put our plays up against any theater troupe of any age, and they usually did pretty damn well. — Jello Biafra
I was always drawn to performing, but I never thought I could. I have no idea what I wanted to do outside of the old cowboy-or-fireman. When I was in college, I got serious about acting. I started examining history and then everything related to the theater. History, art, all the other studies, if I could link them into the theater, then it became alive for me. It just opened up my eyes. — Billy Crystal
I started theater when I was three, and I started doing professional acting when I was nine. — Liana Liberato
For my entire career, I wanted to be a director. When I was in the theater, it was very difficult to get directing jobs, and I fell into the acting by default. I got in the habit of accepting whatever came my way. Not things that I disagreed with, though. It's not like I had aspirations - well, I did have aspirations to play Hamlet, which I ended up doing. — James Cromwell
The theater is a weapon, and it is the people who should wield it. — Augusto Boal
The theater is a kind of international language, and I like it. But I have a practical bent of mind, too. In any other field, I could make only about a tenth as much as I do acting. That's why I want to be a producer. It pays better, and you have more control. — Carolyn Jones
Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the director's eyes, you 'get it right' does not allow for very much creative freedom ... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater. — Mara Wilson
I'm lucky enough to say my day job is acting. I cut my teeth as a theater actor and playwright in New York. — Christopher Denham
And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts. — James Broughton
I went to UCLA for a year and a quarter. There were too many students at UCLA interested in what I was interested in, and they couldn't accommodate all of us. I wasn't allowed to take voice or dance, only theater and acting. So I saved my money and, at 19, moved to New York. — Casey Nicholaw
From a young age, I had done a lot of theater and musical theater. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but every time I was away from acting, I just felt very incomplete and a little stir crazy. — Alexander Koch
My background is a small town with no movie theater. So ... I always pictured myself onstage. I went to acting school and learned all the skills. I left early because I did my first movie and discovered that I really loved the minimalistic work with the camera. — Franka Potente
I was, throughout school, in the theater program. Through elementary school, junior high, high school, and then J.J. Abrams, my closest friend in the world, we were living together. He was writing, and I was trying writing; I wasn't getting paid for it like he was, but I always had the acting bug. — Greg Grunberg
I think I got into acting because I kind of had not much else to do! I guess I was kind of looking for something challenging. I heard about the London Theater scene and it was very different from the upbringing that I had and it felt like a challenge. And the whole sort of London Theater schools, I was told that 6,000 apply and there are like 30 accepted to each one. I was like, "Yeah. Let's see if we can do that!" — Jeremy Irvine
Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It's a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I'm also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college. — Chiwetel Ejiofor
I went to college at University of South Carolina and dropped out of chemistry, and to fill a class, the only spot they had left was a theater class. It was so annoying, but I took it and then I thought it was the greatest thing; the most socially creative. I dropped out of school immediately and moved to New York to start acting. I was 19. — Jonny Weston
Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and to actualize our being and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full authentic self-expression. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater. — Gabrielle Roth
I thought I'd be doing theater, really. That's all I had experience with growing up. I mean, I saw movies and television, but I don't think I really connected at a young age that that was acting, that that was part of the profession. — Zeljko Ivanek
When I was in junior high, a foreign-history teacher started a theater class. So I got my feet wet there and through high school, so I was very fascinated with acting as a means of expression. — Dwight Yoakam
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
Acting was something I did growing up. I never it took it too seriously; it was just one of those things I got into high school and was like, 'Nah, I don't want to continue acting.' Cause I got into it professionally by local theater, and from there, I just decided to do sports and be more a high school kid and have my fun. — Stephen Colletti
I remember having friends in high school that did the theater department stuff, and I always wanted to try it but never had the guts to. I was the class clown but could never really build up the courage to try it. I took one acting class and really enjoyed it. — Robert Buckley
I was 20 years old, working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi, just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like, 'Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?' But I took a class, and the teacher thought that I had potential, so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning. — Cory Monteith
As a kid, I was fortunate that we grew up near a children's theater, with all different classes and things; so as a kid I took classes there and as I got into high school I did all the community theater stuff. Then I came to college in New York and studied acting there. But most of the training I got was from working. Working with really great people. — Andrew Rannells
I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on 'Mad Men' as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera. — Gillian Jacobs
I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine. — Laurence Fishburne
I did ballet and gymnastics, and then I started acting when I was eight - just doing amateur theater at a place called Oldham Theatre Workshop in my hometown. — Olivia Cooke
It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild
In theater, you're playing characters. You believe you're somebody else, and you're acting. — Gene Simmons
I fell in love with theater there, and after graduation I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. — Olivia Wilde
I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person. — Mackenzie Davis
I used to be a bit obsessed by acting but not anymore. I do enjoy acting but I probably enjoy it more now because it's easier. I can't work in the theater because to me it's too serious. It's like being in prison for me. I admire people that can do that but I can't do it. I'd rather live my life and do a bit of acting in between. — Anthony Hopkins
Acting was definitely half of what I loved about storytelling and about theater. So, when I get a chance to do a cameo in a show or do a movie, it's a lot of fun and it's always great stepping outside of yourself and either playing a bizarro version of yourself or playing a character. — Josh Groban
Acting had always been the social scene I'd fallen into. It was sort of a merry band of band geeks and theater nerds. — Adam Baldwin
I did a lot of theater in college, and I knew that not many people make it, but I just figured, 'Well, I really want to try acting while I'm young, and I don't ever want to look back and say that I never gave it a try.' I fully figured I'd be back in grad school - probably for psychology. — Hank Azaria
Archangel Gabriel is the angel of messengers. So if your creative urges lean more toward writing, video producing, theater, or acting, call upon Gabriel. This archangel acts like an agent and manager who opens doors of opportunities, and then powerfully guides you to walk through those doors toward a successful outcome. — Sophie Lee
I grew up in the theater, my mother is an actress, I was always around the world of acting and theater. — Alicia Keys
My first thought about acting, growing up here in New York, was theater, and I feel like I need to force myself to go get my ass kicked in a rehearsal room and do one of those plays at some point. — Paul Dano
Watching my stepfather and mother working in the industry - acting and composing - and seeing firsthand how difficult it is to achieve a successful career in the theater, I thought it might be safer to go to art school with the aim of becoming a painter. — Juliet Rylance
I don't see many people with longevity anymore. Everything was harder when I started, and you had to take acting lessons, do theater parts, work on connections and then get lucky. The technology is good, but it's also a hindrance for longevity. — Dustin Diamond
I've been acting since I was a little kid. It was my escape from my day which had to do with a father leaving, and a mother not being home, and her struggling and doing her best and all that. But it wasn't fun. I would go into theater class. If she were a stay-at-home mom, I wouldn't have that discomfort inside that kept me pushing. — Daphne Zuniga
If you are looking for something, don't go sit on the seashore and expect it to come and find you; you must search, search, search with all the stubbornness in you! — Konstantin Stanislavski
It's good to learn early that every show is a family
complete with dysfunctional relationships, tough love, and plenty of occasion for forgiveness ... — Kristin Chenoweth
I always loved theater and acting in plays and directing, writing little plays and directing friends in plays. — Todd Haynes
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
I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting. — Alfred Molina
I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it's been something that I've always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at. — Aasif Mandvi
My mom thought I might be good for voiceover. She thought I had a cute voice, so maybe I could do a cartoon or something. And while we were looking into that, we also thought I should get into theater acting, so I tried it and the first audition I went on, I booked it. And it kind of just snowballed from there. — Atticus Shaffer
I'd done some acting in high school. Then I went to Kenyon College and got thrown in jail and kicked off the football team. Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years. Got my degree in speech; they didn't actually have a degree in theater. I graduated at two o'clock in the afternoon, and at three-thirty I was on the train for Williams Bay, Wisconsin, for summer stock, and then I did winter stock. — Paul Newman
I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. — T. J. Miller
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