I write for an audience that likes what I like, reads what I read, thinks about the things I think about. In many ways, this puts me in opposition to the people who go to the theater generally.
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.
When I owned the theater, I had the Glen Miller Orchestra. I had 20 girls singing and dancing. I had a cast of characters. It was a big group production, as well as ushers, ticket takers.
Well, all I can say is thank goodness I had 15 years of theater before ever I did film roles. You build technique that you can rely on.
I come from theater, and doing period stuff is so whimsical and imaginative and so outside any frame of reference than I have ever had so I prefer that just in terms of fun factor.
One of the things that I thought really worked was that you have 'Smallville' on television and 'Superman Returns' come out in the theater, and it was fine. Nobody freaked out; nobody thought they were competing.
I'm lucky to have worked in theater all over the world, but there's something magical about Broadway. The audiences are smart, they're educated. They go in ready and they're up for it, they're up for the party. It's a whole different atmosphere.
I come from classical theater training and when I went to college it was a bunch of kids that were hand-picked from around the world. I was around such brilliant young minds and incredible artists with incredible teachers.
I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to think of yourself as a biological scientist of some sort, pretty well everything else seems frivolous by comparison.
They would have been very let down if they had to leave the theater and he had missed. He would feel badly. Everyone would feel badly. But he never let them down.
There's nothing like the energy in a small comedy club room or a small theater when it's going really well. I can see everybody's face practically in the whole room. There's no cameras in the way, and it's just me.
When I was on Broadway, people would really just recognize me around the theater. When you're showing up on commercials and posters, the scope of people recognizing you gets a little wider.
The greatly anticipated 2009 Masters was like going to a Broadway hit and finding out that the star, Sir Tiger Woods, was off that night, and his replacement was the cab driver who dropped you off at the theater.
Playing in front of an audience was just such a turn-on for me, and you have 200 people in the audience and it's like doing live theater. And filming something that goes to millions of people several weeks later, it's an interesting dynamic.
You're not allowed to mess up in theater, and if you do, it is going to be embarrassing. But in film, if you make a mistake you just do it over again. You can just do another take.
The theater of the mind is impossible to compete with, and I like the idea that with a few suggestions, each reader forms in his or her own mind what a character or a place looks like.
Our only competition in the theater is boredom, because if I'm bored with a play, if I'm revolted by a play on stage, with the Broadway prices, especially today, I'm going to walk out and not come back and pay that price again.
Miss Fontanne and I rehearse all the time. Even after we leave the theater, we rehearse. We sleep in the same bed. We have a script on our hands when we go to bed. You can't come and tell us to stop rehearsing after eight hours.
When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the ci...
I was always talking in weird voices from the time I was two. I guess I just found a way to keep doing it! I did get a degree in theater and took some voice-over classes... but most of it is just the same stuff I was doing as a kid!
I went to the University/Resident Theatre Association auditions. Deans come and watch you in this theater. You have three minutes, and you have to do two contrasting monologues - at that time, this is 2003 - one classical and one contemporary.
