A Quote by Francis Ford Coppola

Being a former theater student, of course, there is a part of me that is fascinated with stage crafts and what you can do with illusions and working within the confines of the studio.
I learned more about who I am and how to be a great worker - and a great artistic worker - from doing student theater. I was a stage manager. I was an assistant stage manager. I was on the running crew. I did probably 25 shows at Northwestern - all musicals, of course.
My whole life at a certain point was studio, hotel, stage, hotel, stage, studio, stage, hotel, studio, stage. I was expressing everything from my past, everything that I had experienced prior to that studio stage time, and it was like you have to go back to the well, in order to give someone something to drink. I felt like a cistern, dried up and like there was nothing more. And it was so beautiful.
A studio gangster dupes people into believing he's a tough guy, but in reality he's the former student body president and member of the National Honor Society. Once Vanilla Ice was fingered as a studio gangster, his career was over. Thank God.
The master and the student on the journey to mastery, knows that the illusions are the illusions, decides why they are there, and then consciously creates what will be experienced next within the self through the illusions. When facing any life experience, there is a formula, a process, through which you may choose to move through mastery. Simply make the following statements: One, nothing in my world is real. Two, The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it. Three, I am who I say I am, and my experience is what I say it is. This is how to work with the illusions of life.
Manchester Youth theater, then the National Student Theater Company, and later, my degree course, all helped form my love of telling stories and directing.
Manchester Youth theater, then the National Student Theater Company and later my degree course all helped form my love of telling stories and directing.
I held down as many jobs as I could find, from being a waiter to working at a yoga studio and as a ticket-taker at a small theater company - anything that would allow me to go out and do auditions.
I've studied theater since high school. Of course, it's a different story altogether being on Broadway, but it's still theater, and you have to be in front of a live audience, and that's very exciting. It's something I've definitely wanted to do, but I got involved in movies and television, and then it became a luxury to get back on the stage.
There is probably some great acting that goes on in movies from people who have never been on a stage, but if you are in for the long haul, you'd be missing an enormous part of what being an actor is if you're not part of theater.
Then, in 2000, John Reid, Elton John's former manager, asked me to audition for the stage version of The Graduate he was producing. So I worked on it, got the part, and after three weeks' rehearsal I was on stage!
I'm a total theater junkie - whether I'm working on a stage or sitting in a seat. I am always looking for a great play and a great part to do.
I have no illusions at all about being a sex symbol. None of my former girlfriends ever thought of me that way, and I don't have any packs of women chasing me down the street like a Brad Pitt or someone like that.
For me, a lot of my fondest memories of being in the music business were being in the studio with The Doobs and being part of that organization and being a part of that music.
I'm fascinated by movies and enjoy that, of course, but always, the measure of how you are functioning in the arts was theater.
When I was a student at Princeton University, I was working part time in a grocery store. I saw an ad for teachers of a prep course. I don't remember what it paid, but it was easily double or triple the minimum wage.
The headmistress was a very well-respected theater teacher. She taught me what stage left and stage right were, what a director was, and what all these things meant, which was something I had no concept of. She sent me off to drama school, at age 18, and I stayed there for three years. Before I knew it, I was working on a TV show.
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