A Quote by Matthew Davis
Initially, I had started doing theater, where the actor has a direct relationship to the audience. So, moving into film and television disconnected me. When you do a film, you start to get the character, and then it disappears for a year before it's released and you get feedback.
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When you do a film, you start to get the character, and then it disappears for a year before it's released and you get feedback.
When I was younger, I definitely thought musical theater was sort of more pure than film. I used to say I'd never go to film because we had to get it right the first time in musical theater. But then, of course, I started doing film and realized I loved it. Keep in mind that I was 8 years old when I said that.
I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.
My job as a character actor is to make me fit the character, to serve the character. To present this human being who turns up in a piece of film or entertainment that's going, you know, exist as if it might exist after the film is finished and it existed before the film has started.
We film in front of a live audience, and I was a theater actor before I got into television, so I like that.
I think somewhere in the '90s, it started to shift, and you started to see a lot of film and television actors doing theater, and producers using the notoriety of the film and television actors to sell tickets.
Getting the audience to cry for the Terminator at the end of T2, for me that was the whole purpose of making that film. If you can get the audience to feel emotion for a character that in the previous film you despised utterly and were terrified by, then that's a cinematic arc.
I always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.
What happens in Israel, it's not so divided between being a film actor, or a TV actor - usually, we just do everything. I do theater, film, and television, and the theater is mostly financed by the government.
There's something about that relationship between actor and audience. Whether you get it on Broadway or in a fine local playhouse, there's no greater drug. Every time I get to do TV, film and a play in the same year, it's my dream come true.
'W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.
The first thing I say when people ask what's the difference [between doing TV and film], is that film has an ending and TV doesn't. When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there. And in television, it can't end. You need the audience to return the next week. It kind of shifts the drive of the story. But I find that more as a writer than as a director.
Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.
I grew up doing plays - I went to a stage school after school - and it's always something that I've wanted to do, but, in a weird way, if you do television and film and you didn't go to drama school and don't have a theatrical background, it's hard to get your foot in the door. In the same way that it is for theater actors to get into television and film. There's a weird prejudice that goes both ways.
I never did theater. I was a theater major at USC my first year because I didn't get into the film school. I was biding my time, hoping to be accepted to film school, and I ended up transferring to UCLA my sophomore year.
For two consecutive Broadway seasons, I had probably the best juvenile roles there were for an actor. Then I moved to California to recreate my role in the film version of 'Tribute.' I started working in film and television after that, and 38 years blew by!
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