A Quote by Courtney B. Vance

It was a natural for me to end up in the theater because I'd done a lot of reading about it. — © Courtney B. Vance
It was a natural for me to end up in the theater because I'd done a lot of reading about it.
I ask the stunt guys, all the time, to do as much of the stunts as possible, and they let me do a lot. They don't throw me through windows because they're not allowed to and I probably wouldn't say yes to that. But I have done a lot of physical acting before, in theater, so that comes very natural to me.
At the end of the day, it is about the album and book and also about setting the record straight, because 'American Idol' has done a great job of defaming my name and throwing a lot of mud at me for the past two years. So that set up a lot of roadblocks for me.
Because lots of LGBTQ people are really smart, and there's so much really interesting reading that can be done, and so much academic writing that's been done about it, people can end up getting quite academic about it.
I don't have much to compare it to because I really didn't know much about theater. After I signed on, I started reading a lot of Sam Shepard plays just to brush up on my history and do some research. What's great is that Sam's been here and he's been in rehearsals with us. Sometimes you don't even notice him come in; he's just sitting there in the theater seats watching you.
A lot of actors say that theater's the thing for them. And that's great, and I'm not one to speak with any authority about it because of not having done it properly. For me, movies are what I love.
My mother is an actress, and she used to drag me from theater to theater and reading to reading.
Reading is how I became an actor because I didn't grow up in a house where there was an awareness of film or theater. I also grew up in a house full of teachers, so reading was big in our world.
A lot of people believe in reading reviews. If I get too focused on some detail of what they've said about me, I'm going to end up shooting myself in the foot.
There's a lot of lies out there that we should catch and that have taken me a lot of time to sort of see, and reading up on it and getting educated on it. I'm reading a book that's about how images of beauty have hurt women along the decades. It's a very educating but infuriating thing to see, how we don't have equal opportunity because they're demanding so much more.
I designed a theater magazine that was full of plays and essays about the theater, and then I worked at a theater school. By osmosis or something, I was learning from reading plays and not being analytical about them, but when I would read them, the joy in me was mostly from imagining them in my head and visualizing them.
I really didn't know much about theater. After I signed on, I started reading a lot of Sam Shepard plays just to brush up on my history and do some research.
I majored in drama and theater arts at Columbia and was always in acting studio, but that was a liberal arts degree, not a bachelor of arts degree, so I didn't have a traditional conservatory training. There was a lot of reading and a lot of writing involved, and only about 30 percent of my classes were directly theater-related.
I usually just try to do whatever's on the page because I've done research before - including a lot of analysis - but you end up with conflicting data. To me, the script is king.
I'd be up three grand and I'd end up losing the lot. It didn't affect me because I knew I was about to get a move and the signing-on fee would make up for the money I lost.
You don't have to care about children to care about children. One of the things that I talk a lot about is the fact of the importance of third-grade reading level. By the end of third grade, if the child is not at reading level, it'll drop off. They never catch up.
I have a children's theater background, so I grew up performing for child audiences; it's sort of my specialty. I know the child audience pretty well - or felt like I did because I performed for them so much. I studied a lot about the child audience, about theater. So it was naturally a place that I gravitated to.
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