'The New Yorker's' drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ critics who moonlighted in the arts. They worked both sides of the street, so to speak.
Playing athletics, playing a lot of different sports, going to drama school... I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so I ended up being pretty average at everything.
The best job was when I was at drama school and I cleaned flats in the Barbican. I loved it. They were spotless anyway, so you'd just watch the telly and flick a duster around.
The sixty-minute drama form has become very rich.
I'm not a huge drama person. I think I liked them more when I was younger.
I was interested in drama, but it never seemed like a real profession somehow. It was so outside my experience, and I probably wouldn't have had the confidence for drama school, though I did send off for an application form.
I have been fortunate to be able to have a career playing comedy and drama. And it's awfully hard - it's like apples and pears to compare the two.
I'm an actor. I want to do drama.
I always enjoyed participating in artistic endeavors, and I remember in high school participating in chorus, drama and singing madrigals, mainly because they were an easy A. I loved being in plays and musicals too, but you didn't really get credit for those.
I'd always enjoyed acting at high school, and I was all lined up to do an honours degree course in biology at a Canadian university, and at the eleventh hour the drama teacher I had said, 'You know, you'll get a lot more girls if you go into acting,' and that kinda sold it.
Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.
I went to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which was great but very different from a typical university. They sat us down in the first week and said: if you want to party, you've come to the wrong place. There was no lie-ins or skipping lectures.
'Shameless' is going to shake up television. Any drama is good drama. Bring it.
I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.
Put me in a costume, and I'm your man. I must have one of those faces which seems to suit period drama more than modern films and TV programmes. But I'm not complaining, I love going back in time. I feel quite lucky because nobody knows who I am. I can walk about and have ordinary conversations with people.
The purpose of the Seder to my mind is to inspire conversations with your family about the human drama and hopefully transmit values to the next generation. I've always felt like this could be better.
I really love idiot, enlightened characters - these characters who fail to engage with the drama of their immediate circumstances; they fail to be reactive and enrolled by drama as it happens around them.
I think there's definitely a way to tell a story, to also look at marriages that are working, but find drama from what's challenging them. That's what I think, certainly, 'Parenthood' is kind of about: the unexpected things that come up in your life that challenge you as a man, as a woman, as a husband and a wife, and as a parent.
That's the great thing about university: you've got people around you who are taking a risk and trying things out themselves. It gives you the confidence to try and take it to the next step, which was drama school.
My family weren't actors, and we didn't know any actors. It wasn't even something I was aware you could do as a job. I thought you had to be a Redgrave or a Barrymore before you were allowed to go to drama school.
My drama instructor suggested I try comedy. I was resistant at first because I considered myself a serious actor, but of course I fell in love with it.
Drama comes more naturally to me. It's the comedy you really have to delve into.
I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life. But what got me was the sound, and hearing it. Hearing everything so loud, I loved that back in the studio. I loved that from the very beginning.
The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama.
The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.
Someone told me about drama schools, and they seemed like mythological places - you can really go and be in drama classes all day? I inadvertently entered into this world where people wore bicycle clips and did song-and-dance routines in the corridors.
The way I view drama is life with the boring bits taken out.
When you're dealing with long-distance relationships, it's a relationship played out over technology. When you're in high school, it's because you're not supposed to act on those impulses yet. So some of my favorite relationships in drama are based in people that can't really be together.
When I was 17, I studied at RADA in London for the summer. I wanted to live abroad and to pursue drama, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I thought I may as well throw myself in at the deep end. My first big role is in 'Starlet.'
Whether I'm acting or making it, at the end of the day it's telling the story; action, drama. You want the audience to feel it - the story, the action, the scene, or a particular shot. I just keep working on crafting my art, on how to make action movies.
I come from a very close class. I lucked out because drama schools are often very competitive... I have fourteen classmates.
There's a film I did called 'Front of the Class', about a teacher who had Tourette's. That was a beautiful blend of drama and comedy. There's some great moments of levity in the script.
Sports is the ultimate escape, the ultimate in reality programming. It's true drama. You really don't know what's going to happen.
You go to drama school, and the people you revere and admire are those who work on the London stage, and you hope that's a world that you'll be able to break into and do enough occasional television and small film work to eventually get to the point where you're paying the bills.
I'm just an actor. If it's drama, I add as much humour as the part will stand. And if it's a comedy, add as much drama as you can, so it balances out; you don't wanna be too serious.
