The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.
The Parisian has his amusements as regularly as his meals, the theatre, music, the dance, a walk in the Tuilleries, a refection in the cafe, to which ladies resort as commonly as the other sex. Perpetual business, perpetual labor, is a thing of which he seems to have no idea.
The thing about theatre is that when it is actually occurring, when you have the audience on your side, you absolutely think you can will them to do anything. It's exhilarating.
I did fringe theatre for so many years, and then I got my first play at the RSC, which was an amazing feeling, but I was 30 and had started acting in my early twenties.
Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it's gone.
There wasn't anyone in my family who was involved in the theatre. I saw a few amateur plays when I was growing up, but I can't think of anything that happened or anybody in particular who inspired me; it all came from within.
People that went to art house theatre have more options, I used to go, but now think any movie can be delivered in a red envelope three months after it's released so why not watch it on my flat screen in the comfort of home.
Whether you are a writer or an actor or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.
Theatre is great, but we don't live in an idealistic world, and we have to pay our bills.
I came up almost completely through the subsidised theatre. I have never been absolutely at the market interface, where I've got to sell my wares or die - I've always been protected from that.
I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.
Judi Dench and Ian McKellen taught me how to work hard and respect the theatre.
I feel that David took a risk with me. I have a sense that by starting off in the theatre and going off to do films you are seen to sell out in some way. I don't hold truck with that, but you can't stop people from feeling it.
I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider, but I discovered theatre very early on, which got me through.
There's no question about it: the best theatre is collaboration. The best anything is collaboration.
I remember when 'The Right Stuff' opened in Hollywood. I got dressed that morning and drove my car down to the theatre that it was playing on, thinking that there would be mobs of people outside. When I looked, there was nobody there.
The best theatre I've done, I've done right here in this living room.
I'm not being offered a constant stream of wonderful parts with wonderful directors that would keep me away from the theatre. When they turn up, I do them.
I did loads of student films and fringe theatre. I worked for free a lot.
I've lived on my own since 17, and when I found I wasn't working all the time, I ended up starting a small theatre company called Red One Theatre.
I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker's assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
I'd like more kids to go and see theatre because it really is amazing.
I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you're playing.
The interest of my mother was more in the entertainment field. She loved to go to concerts and to the theatre.
I don't mean to be oily, but critics are very much part of the theatre.
I just dreamed about living in Paris and being French. I always loved the visual arts, film and theatre, and I hoped to be involved in creating beautiful products and images.
There isn't really a theatre culture in L.A., which is odd when there are so many brilliant actors there.
I do like to be creative and I'm very lucky that I've been given different areas in which I'm able to do that - whether it be film or television or theatre or whatever. I'm also still into music and recording.
Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.
I feel there's a power in theatre, but it's an indirect power. It's like the relationship of the sleeper to the unconscious. You discover things you can't afford to countenance in waking life. You can forget them, remember them a day later or not have any idea what they are about.
Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity.
From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.
My experiences in film and theatre in the States have been much more rigorous-in England there's an environment of, Let's try this.
Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
My family were broadminded enough to support me when I wanted to pursue a life in the theatre.
The Saving Our Cinderellas program is a facet of Saving Our Daughters which is more specifically geared towards using music, theatre, film and television as a means to help build self-esteem in our girls by developing programs that allow them to discover, explore and express their individuality using the arts.
