I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.
My background is in theater. I was a theater major in college.
There weren't any funny people in sports or the Spanish club. All the really creative, witty, funny people that made your belly hurt were in the theater program.
You can work really hard on your physicality, on your craft, on the films you do. You can choose the best of directors, the best of productions, get the best technicians, you can put your entire body and soul into the making of a film, but at the end of the day, it all depends on the mood of that one audience member that goes into that theater.
There's a lot of noise in the world. And one of the beautiful things about doing theater and film is the absence of that noise or, perhaps, the adding of that noise where it's helpful in telling the story. I'm always trying to get rid of that noise. The more you do it, the better you get.
There isn't much improvisation in film - there's virtually none. The people that theoretically could be good at this in a theater situation don't necessarily do this in a film in a way that will work, because it's much broader on a stage.
Some days, I just love the physical space of the theater. I love theaters; they are heartbreakingly beautiful to me.
My folks met at the University of Oklahoma, in the theater department in the 1940s. They were married touring the country in 'Cinderella' and 'Snow White.' My mother was married in Cinderella's costume; the dwarves were the best men.
Thank God for theater and film and television and my very, very, very lucky life.
In Chicago, actors start up companies and get together and produce things, and there's a really rich, vibrant non-Equity theater scene out there.
I always wanted to do films. I'd gone to New York early in 1976 and did a lot of theater, but I really wanted to chase the paths of people like Pacino and Lemmon and those guys. Alan Arkin. Film was where I wanted to go.
I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.
I went to theater school at Northwestern, and I was quite conservative. Reagan at the time seemed quite revolutionary, or at least a rock star: He was radical and kind of punk rock.
I'd studied theater growing up and loved that, but didn't have many examples of artists around me.
What I strive to do is to make the theater experience something that people remember and recall rather than dismiss because it was less like their everyday experiences. So, I'm less interested in internal emotionalism and much more in making the audience laugh and cry by the devices that we use as theater actors.
I went to my school careers counselors and said I wanted to be an actor, and they didn't know what to do. They showed me catalogues with pretty campuses and said, 'Oh, look, there's a theater building. Why don't you go there?'
I do think that it's better for a musical to live its life first because if you see it on the screen, would you like to go to the theater after that? Probably not. You've seen it. And that's the mystery of a musical that hasn't been filmed. You're bloody meant to go there and buy your ticket.
After three years in L.A., I began to dream of my glory days on the boards. But it's very difficult to make a living as a theater actor in New York, which is why I moved out here, and I always had an ambition to work in television. I am a great admirer of the format, and I think it's how we tell long stories.
The arts are suffering amongst public schools, but also, minority theater companies are struggling, and I firmly believe in freedom of expression through the arts.
When I wanted to audition for a dinner-theater junior troupe in my hometown, I needed to have a piece of musical theater music to sing. I wasn't sure what I wanted to use. My mom and dad suggested that I sing 'Edelweiss' because I knew it from the music box.
'Last House' offended a lot of people. The results in the theaters, even in Boston, reminded me a bit of things from when I was studying Theater of the Absurd, and the rise and the appearance of Ionesco plays, and things like that.
Working in theater, film, or television are three different jobs for an actor, and I accept them as such.
For me, there is nothing more valuable than how people feel in a movie theater about a movie.
I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors.
It's so great in the theater when everyone catches up on the truth.
In the theater, you didn't have any marks. Your instincts in rehearsal told you what the blocking was. On film, they reversed it. They decided ahead of time what your instincts were, before you even arrived.
I love to go to a regular movie theater, especially when the movie is a big crowd-pleaser. It's much better watching a movie with 500 people making noise than with just a dozen.
There are times to be casual and times to be correct. It's all right to wear a sweater and slacks on a picnic, but they don't belong in the theater or the drawing room.
I wasn't even a theater kid in high school. I studied classical piano, and I ran track.
None of us get to divorce ourselves from the world. We walk into the theater and bring all of our grief and our pain and our joy with us.
When I was 13 years old, a professional theater company in my town needed a kid actor. I auditioned, and I got the part, so for just a few weeks I became a member of the company and I met some professional actors.
In television, a sitcom is probably the closest thing to what it's like working in the theater.
There's hearings on everything. They're kabuki theater.
In college, I stopped doing pre-med and went into theater, and then I moved to San Francisco and lived there for five years.
I go to the theater because I need help dealing with my life; I want to see the greatest questions addressed. I need to see actors grappling with things that matter.
I didn't really start going to see a lot of musicals and live theater probably until I was in seventh or eighth grade, maybe my first year of high school, and by that time I'd probably seen 'Grease' twice a year every year of my life.
