A Quote by Ian Mckellen

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.
Being an actor in TV or movies is different. A film or TV actor, if put in theatre, won't know certain dimensions, while a theatre actor won't know certain things when he comes before the camera. So I think a film actor can learn emoting from this theatre counterpart, while the theatre actor can learn about camera techniques from the film actor.
I hope it's always going to be a mix between theatre, film and radio. I've been very lucky living in London that you can do all that - in New York and L.A., there's more of a structure for film in L.A. and theatre in New York. In London, our industry is smaller, but it produces brilliant work all in one place.
Virtually all my conscious life I had been involved in theatre - I had been a child actor - but as a young man who had experienced the 1960s, British theatre seemed remote from my aspirations in life - theatre was still a posh thing, a middle-class thing, something for an elite.
I went to theatre school for four years and just wanted to do theatre. I had no ambition to be on TV or to be on camera. I just wanted to go to New York or London and be on stage... I did a lot of theatre in Montreal, got involved in TV in Toronto and then moved to L.A. I hope that film and TV will take me back to theatre.
I would most like to do film or TV. Possibly theatre in the future, but I'm in L.A. a lot of the time at the moment and if I was going to do theatre it would be in London.
I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself.
Modelling was not very satisfying for me. I came to London to model, and I fell in love with the theatre. I was eating yoghurt every day so that I had the money to go to the theatre. I saw everything. It's still my dream to be on stage in London.
Before I worked on film, I studied the theatre, and I expected that I would spend my whole career in theatre. Gradually, I started writing for the cinema. However, I feel grateful towards the theatre. I love working with spectators, and I love this experience with the theatre, and I like theatre culture.
I didn't particularly aim to be a Shakespeare actor, but I suppose I had a certain gift or it; I certainly got offered lots of it. I liked Complicite and Shared Experience and Kick Theatre, and all the small theatre companies that were getting going. I wanted to be like that, making original theatre.
I have taken film-work that has been a little more cliché-written, to support myself and my family, and that's a whole kind of other challenge. It's like chopping wood: You've got to take what you can get and bless what withstands you. But in theatre! There's enough great theatre that you can find something interesting!
I treasure the dark hours in a theatre. But I don't think that, if a film does not reach the theatre, it is, therefore, not a film.
Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn't for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.
I think, in the past, you could buy a flat and live comfortably on theatre and touring theatre, but you can't do that anymore, which means that you have to have a certain amount of celebrity and profile to, therefore, get TV and film work.
It is in the irony of things that the theatre should be the most dangerous place for the actor. But, then, after all, the world is the worst possible place, the most corrupting place, for the human soul. And just as there is no escape from the world, which follows us into the very heart of the desert, so the actor cannot escape the theatre. And the actor who is a dreamer need not. All of us can only strive to remain uncontaminated. In the world we must be unworldly, in the theatre the actor must be untheatrical.
Theatre is an actor's medium. An actor has little control over a film. Which is why most actors who have done theatre, and then come to films find the former more creatively satisfying.
Asim has done English theatre with Naseeruddin Shah and his group, Hindi theatre with Makarand Deshpande, and Marathi theatre with me. He is a hardworking actor - I am not saying this just because he is my son but as an actor and spectator.
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