It's not that I'm sick of the theater, don't get me wrong. I'm just tired of the commitment.
I've always loved Victorian melodrama. And I've always liked larger-than-life theater, providing it's truthful and honest. I like what the theater can provide in energy and bombast - I enjoy it when it's large, and by that I don't mean in size, I mean in emotions. Shakespeare did that.
I realized that after years of studying Shakespeare and Chekhov and regional repertory theater, what I really wanted to do was bust in and rob a bank and jump in the screaming getaway car and tear through the city and get in a shootout.
I have a psychology degree, but I was a real theater rat.
I've worked with some teachers and coaches over the years, but I didn't really study theater or technique or voice or any of that stuff extensively.
One of the things that I thought really worked was that you have 'Smallville' on television and 'Superman Returns' come out in the theater, and it was fine. Nobody freaked out; nobody thought they were competing.
I came out to Hollywood when I was just 18, and my dad, he was really into Hollywood and theater and art, and I guess growing up, he exposed me to a lot of culture, and I just started making Super-8 films in high school and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.
What I try to do - I mean 'try,' because you don't get there all the time - is to have impact with content. It's those moments in which you're trying to bring people beyond filmed theater. If I have an ambition, it's that.
I graduated from a place called Whitworth College in Spokane with a theater degree, then in 1993 I moved to L.A. and auditioned and did very well there. My first gig was playing a skinhead in John Singleton's 'Higher Learning', and I played Glenn Close's son in a TV movie called 'Serving In Silence.'
I've been on the board of UCLA Film and TV School, and I went to UCLA. I realized that the same movie theater that was there when I went to school, 30 years later is the same movie theater in the same condition. There was an opportunity to refurbish an existing room, and I jumped at the opportunity.
I'm from Mt. Clemens, Michigan. It's right outside Detroit. The suburbs. I was always very heavily involved in theater back then. I was always in drama club or forensics. Anything that you could do that had some performing, I was doing it.
I see a lot of art; we see a lot of music, films at Sundance... that influences me and informs me more than theater just because I make a bigger effort to see other art forms.
All I've done is live my life in the theater and loved it.
I was in theater when I was in elementary, middle school and high school. I didn't know it would be an actual profession for me. I didn't think of it as a reality.
Some of the greatest works of theater, from Chekov's work to modern playwrights', consist of just a few people in a room with no one leaving.
I saw Lee J. Cobb in 'Death of a Salesman' when I was about 15, and I couldn't get up from my seat in the theater; I was so... I was weeping, and I was upset. And I find that people are still like that in a similar circumstance in a theater today, where they just can't get up. It's too heartbreaking.
I started in theater. I did theater professionally for seven years with my company before I started doing 'Friends.' I was waiting tables and doing theater.
There are other people in 'Dreamgirls' who are born-again Christians. We have a Bible study class once a week. It was started by Charles Bernard and myself. We meet at the theater.
I do theater as much as possible, but it's very difficult to manage for me.
I've always said that theater was where I began, so everything I do now has a bit of my theater background in it. It was my training.
At some point, when I was 14 or 15, the idea crossed my mind to become an actor... I hadn't been to the theater much... When I grew up, we had one TV channel, which was sufficient.
People don't really want reality. They want theater, and that's different.
I loved Ingrid Bergman. I sat and saw her on the stage in a theater in the round.
Communication is very important. And the arts do that, whether it's film or theater.
I find it soothing, the thought of a movie theater.
We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what's happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option - not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others - of movies that are in the theater.
I would like to have won a Tony, I guess, because I have always thought of myself as a theater person. But I've won my share of awards, so I don't worry about it.
There are people who've enjoyed my work in the theater, and they let me know that it was special for them. I'm not going to say, 'Well, you should have seen me as Gandalf!'
I'm a weird dichotomy of nerd, sports fan, and musical theater, so I'd love to do a superhero musical on Broadway. But all the good superheroes are claimed.
I used to be on dance team in high school; it was called drill team in Texas. And when I started doing theater sophomore year, I had to make a decision which thing I was gonna follow. It was a big shift because I sort of had all these friends on dance squad, and when I started to do theater, my whole identity shifted.
I want to write theater pieces, opera, or some kind of amalgamation where there is singing, music and theater.
I just thought I would work in a hair salon and do community theater.
I thought I was going to be a theater actor. I moved to New York after college and did some plays and worked a lot. Once the realities of living as a theatrical actor hit me, I realized I wanted to start making a little bit of money and not have to bartend and work in theater.
I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person.
Being an actress wasn't realistic. I knew that I was going to have to do it in a way that would speak to my parents. So I went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts for theater, and I studied at the conservatory.
I think movies have much more magic than the theater. Theater can be a magical experience, but movies thrust their subjectivity on you in a more profound way.