After graduating, the jobs that I got were TV, so you sort of move to where the jobs are. But I would absolutely go back to theater if the role was right.
I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed.
The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes.
When I work in the theater, you know you'll get this almost devotional, religious experience where you're breaking bread with everyone every day.
You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get... It's about experien...
Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.
There's a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.
My limited theater experience was when I was a kid starting out: two or three plays. I was good in one and mediocre in the other. My problem is that I have other interests.
What I always loved about theater is that that's an experience that a company of actors just sinks itself into for weeks, and you really get to work on the material, and by the time you're in front of an audience, you really own it.
The very first things that I did, even in theater, were bad guys. They are meaty roles for the most part. With the bad guy you have more freedom to experiment and go further out than with a good guy.
I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful, and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater, I was, in all likelihood, not going to find financial success.
I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very 'Glee.'
These days, you can do a TV series for five years and all of a sudden be on top of the business. Features don't even run in theaters very long anymore before going right to television.
I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.
I had done theater during high school and college, but with my life and everything I had going on, I decided to go for the health field, where there were stable jobs.
I love getting back to Wivenhoe. I get out of my wig, bustle and costume in three minutes flat at the end of the play before jumping into a taxi outside the theater and catching the train home.
I think every theater in America wants a younger audience... and you can't just hope to have a younger audience, you have to program things that audience is going to connect with.
I wore goofy hats to school and did musical theater. Most people thought I was a dork. But if you have a sense of humor about it, no one can bring you down.
I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.
When I was living on the street I would be standing out in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, leaning against my car and signing autographs and nobody had any idea that I was living in it.
My dad was a theater actor, so I would follow him backstage. And my mom was a casting director. The moment I heard the applause and realized it would get me out of school, I was hooked.
