When I hear that young people have come to the theater for the first time to listen to opera, I'm very happy. Because it's the same thing that happened to me as a child. When I first heard the tenor voice, I immediately fell in love with this kind of...
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 i...
It took me years to actually get comfortable on the stage. I prefer the intimacy of screen; it comes easier to me. In theater, you have to be louder and bigger - that was harder for many years in my teens. But now I've conquered that. I eat up the st...
Every week it's another opportunity to really make that work and figure out how to make it work better. And I love that it's like theater, too, and the audience, and it's so short. It's only 20 minutes. It's like a haiku or something.
My favorite part about working in theater is the rehearsal process. I absolutely love the rehearsal process. Working out the characters, figuring the character out, and the relationships between the different characters. I love all of that, which, un...
I like to read. I go to movies quite a bit. I often go to see friends in theater productions. I hike, stretch and work out. I like to sing. I love going back to acting class and working on new material.
I have a particular pair of headphones I love so much I bring them everywhere: Beats Studio. It's perfect for watching movies as well because you feel like you have your own theater with you, even with your iPad.
I started studying theater in school, and then I got into drama school at, like, 19, and it was a national drama school in Montreal, and so it was just you and nine other students for three years, and it was really intense.
I think when I was doing 'Amistad,' I was just too young to really understand what the process was, and beyond that, I hadn't really got involved. It was just somehow - and I thought that the artistry was all in the theater.
I'm hoping that word-of-mouth on the film - people seeing it and liking it - that that will drive more people to the theaters, because I haven't seen the billboards or the posters or anything.
I have a Tony Award now. It hasn't changed too much in the theater world, but it gives me entree for film stuff and TV stuff, where people will see me more easily now because they know me.
I had always wanted to be an actress. I went to summer theater camp from kindergarten on up until high school, and always had the leads in all the plays - even though they were at the YMCA - but it was something I always wanted to do.
I really like reaching out and seeing the audience - they're potential audiences! And on occasion I can make them excited about going to the theater again, if they've ceased or gone less.
All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.
If you've been in a film that's seen by millions and millions and millions of people, you're more likely to be recognized for that than for your theater performances, which were seen by considerably less people. Why would I get upset by that?
Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.
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.
