Although I performed in high school, my first real experience with theater was performing with a student-run organization at Vanderbilt University called The Original Cast where I learned that I loved performing and especially loved theater people.
I love TV now, and 'Modern Family,' but what draws me back to theater is that initial instinct of wanting to be a theater actor. I love the challenge of starting a play and not stopping until you finish. I love the immediacy of trusting your instinct...
When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that.
Before I ever acted as an amateur - which I did a great deal at school and at university - I used to go to the theater with my parents in the north of England, where I was born and brought up... Theater of all sorts.
I remember when I saw 'The Matrix' when I was 13, I saw it in the theaters, and I was so blown away by it. It was one of the most memorable experiences I definitely ever had in the theater.
I wanted to be a theater actress, but I thought it would be easier to get to New York and the theater if I had a name than if I just walked the streets as a little girl from California.
In Michigan, if you want to act, it's local theater, it's high school theater and it's going to camp and putting on plays in the summer, and I always loved doing that. There was something that just drew me to it.
Theater is a physical activity as much as anything. It's harder for me to learn the lines than it was 30 years ago. At the same time, I'll never quit working in the theater - until I can't memorize two lines back to back.
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.
When I was a freshman, I didn't have that much time for extra-curriculars, so I didn't do any theater stuff. Actually, I didn't do it with my school. I did theater with this thing called Teen Source.
I'd love to go back to Greek times and see the birth of theater and performing, in that time. It would be so extraordinary to see the need that theater came out of, in the first place. I think we could probably all learn a bit from that.
Theater in Chicago will always be my first love. It started careers for me and about 50 of my friends. We all love coming back. As soon as the TV show is over, I'll be back in Chicago, doing live theater.
I started in theater; I did theater in New York for 14 years before I even thought about doing movies - I never thought about being in a film; it just never occurred to me.
I expect at some point I'll probably want to go back on stage and do some theater, because I've not done theater in 10 years.
I was doing theater in my high school, and I started writing sort of silly songs on the piano backstage in summer theater. I eventually put them online and started getting this little following.
Foulfellow: [Picks up Pinocchio's schoolbook and apple, which he eats] Well, well. Quite the scholar, I see. Look, Giddy. A man of letters. Here's your book [hands book to Pinocchio] Pinocchio: I'm going to school. Foulfellow: School. Ah, yes. Then p...
That's one of the things about theater vs. film - with theater, actors have a little more control, and one of the disappointing things about films is that once you're done shooting, anything can happen, you know?
Talking about theater, actually, I built a little barn in upstate New York, and I call it 'the smallest theater in the world,' but it has a mini stage and a red velvet curtain.
When you play arenas you can create whatever you want. At a theater the height of the stage and the limitations of the theater can make you feel more separate from the audience.
There's a relationship in the reality with how theater is presented - you can't experience that anywhere else. When you mess up, you mess up obviously, when you sweat, you sweat obviously, when you cry, you cry obviously. There's no hiding in theater...
The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd bette...
