In theatre, you've got to make the connect with your audience in the first three minutes. If you haven't, you know you've almost lost them.
The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.
My approach to 'Eastenders' is the same as my approach to film and the same approach to theatre. Whatever I do, I use the same skills and tools.
I don't tend to get cast in the theatre much. People assume I come with all this baggage. But they do cast me in films. In films, I'm a nobody.
I like to use my hands. When I was in theatre in college, that was one of my biggest notes: 'You use your hands too much.'
The real thing is, you should be seeing these plays in the Theatre. That's what they were written for. That's where the enjoyment is. Studying them is no enjoyment whatsoever.
I had a very nice, cozy childhood. I did lots of plays at school and worked with the National Youth Theatre as a teenager.
I fell into the theatre because I felt I was doing it well, and I stuck to it for the same reason.
I arrive at the theatre four hours before the beginning of the performance. I must get accustomed to the hall even if I know it well.
I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you're playing.
I'd been gearing up to working in theatre since coming out of drama school, but it was an exciting time for TV drama - it was the birth of Channel 4, and Brookside was very cutting-edge at the time.
Being in TV, we get to do it again and again until it's 'right.' There's a part of me that likes the other way, that aspect of theatre where there's no chance to go back.
With the theatre, your whole day is geared towards the evening's show, and that's the job. People usually go to work about 9 and come home around 5, or maybe 7.
I really hope that I can continue to do classical theatre - it's something I am really passionate about and I'd love to explore.
My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.
It's really a grand old, legendary theatre where the spirits of like Judy Garland and all these great performers have been. The clubs are way more underground.
It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.
It's a whole different kind of anxiety. But the great thing about doing a theatre job is that once the ball starts rolling you just have to go with it, it's inexorable.
I've done great theatre, great films and had a lot of opportunities in television. I also love to sing, and I've been able to do that once or twice in the television shows.
Sitcoms are like summer stock. You put it up in three days, and then you do it in front of an audience, so it's a really great transition from theatre into camera work.
Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor's job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story.
