When I got to high school, I was going to do sports, but I got kicked off the volleyball team because I kept missing it for musical theater.
Both my parents said they never got so many emails from friends and colleagues - with all the theater work that I've done - than when I was on 'The Good Wife.'
When I put something into motion, the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed. I'm just like a shark, in that way. If I stop swimming, I'll die. But, it really is about that shared experience with people. I'm from theater, and that's really what theater feels like.
But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.
I started out a die-hard New Yorker but really grew to love working in Los Angeles. Even though I originally wanted to do theater, TV presented more opportunities for me, which led me out west.
I worked at the Northlight Theater in Skokie, and the Mercury Theater on South Port. I actually did a show there for three years, called 'Over the Tavern.'
I am particularly interested in creating a relationship between ideas of reception in conceptual art and theater.
Theater will cast in a more open way; Denzel Washington might play Richard III. Television and film don't really cast openly like that. The theater world has always been a leader in diversity.
I looked at the circus, and I looked at the carnival, at the fun fair. But I looked at sleeping accommodations and decided I was too middle class to put up with that! So then I joined the theater and found I could choose my own bedroom. I loved the atmosphere. I loved that we worked till midnight and didn't start till ten.
I really only started doing film in '97. I mean, before then, I just pretty much did theater.
It was magical growing up in New Jersey. My sister and I would go nuts in the basement and do full theater productions. We used a humidifier as a fog machine. It was over the top.
There are always leading characters. There are always complex characters; there are very rewarding plays with great directors and tremendous playwrights, yeah. I've done a lot of things with theater that I'm very, very proud of.
Back when I was in theater school, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, 'Sweeney Todd' was a huge touchstone for me, my favorite musical for sure.
Seems like everybody has seen 'Cooley High.' That's what put me on the map. Garrett Morris and I go way back, even before the movie. Great guy. We've done theater and stage plays together, Lincoln Center and all kinds of things.
Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.
It really is like a disease. I just couldn't get away from the theater.
People think that theater actors are too big for the camera. It's like, 'No, we're actors and we adjust for our audience.'
New York City is a big city but a small city when it comes to theater.
I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A.
I started doing theater at the age of six. I also took tap and jazz lessons. I refused to take ballet, which is one of my biggest regrets to this day.
I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go.
I thought I'd be doing theater, really. That's all I had experience with growing up. I mean, I saw movies and television, but I don't think I really connected at a young age that that was acting, that that was part of the profession.
The consumer is deciding what they want to see and when and how, and filmmakers are more aware and accepting of the fact that success is not predicated on your movie showing in a traditional theater for a certain amount of time.
When I was 13, I auditioned for the theater school, and I was there for four years. In the meantime, I did my first three movies, all in Cuba.
I was in the Pacific. The Pacific Theater, as they say.
Theater opened up a whole new world for me. It was a freedom I'd never known before.
I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
I can't take the theater side out of myself.
Look at 'Batman' - that was theater of the absurd, as is 'Family Guy.'
I started off in musical theater, yeah. It was one of my first jobs; it was in Spring Awakening in London, which was amazing.
The economics of theater are painful. I still think that the theater community should be looking much more rigorously at how to let the playwright keep the money they make.
There's definitely a visual aspect and an emotional aspect to a song. And that harks back, for me, to theater.
From day one, musical theater was my bread and butter.
When people come into the theater, whether it's the screen or the stage, they've gotta be transported and transformed.
'Glee' is very easy to clown because I feel like it's just crumbling. 'Smash!' 'Smash' is the ultimate. I love it because I'm all about theater. I did plays in high school and college, and it totally brings me back to that feeling: how excited you get on opening night, how it sucks when you're not learning the dance moves.
I would love to do some theater.
