A Quote by Michael Moriarty

Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation. — © Michael Moriarty
Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.
I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.
Film is something that came later into my life.
I love acting, but that's also kind of what I love about ballet - the acting. So, obviously, film is like an extension of that, which is amazing, but it's also something I can do a bit later on as well.
I think I got into acting because I kind of had not much else to do! I guess I was kind of looking for something challenging. I heard about the London Theater scene and it was very different from the upbringing that I had and it felt like a challenge. And the whole sort of London Theater schools, I was told that 6,000 apply and there are like 30 accepted to each one. I was like, "Yeah. Let's see if we can do that!"
I think acting came later in life when I went to college. I started out there. I wasn't a big star in the school plays or anything. I guess I just really liked stories. I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives. Film and theater are very powerful storytelling mediums. You sit in a dark room and enter another world. I love that as a member of the audience, and I sort of wanted to get on the other side.
Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ?out there? calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice ?in here? calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.
My mother had been an actress and we came from that world in New York, the theater world and the downtown sort of theater scene, and so I guess we didn't really have what you'd call like a Hollywood kind of life at all.
My goal as an actor was to work - to be a working actor, whether it was in theater, and, well, I didn't even consider film and television when I was in New York, but what came along, came along.
I never had any film training. I went to Northwestern. I studied education and theater. So it was all theater training.
When you're on stage, you're playing to whoever is in the back of the room, and TV and film is so much more detailed and nuanced, but I think that's what I always wanted to do. As much as I love theater and musical theater and would love to do it again, I really love the subtleties of film and theater acting.
My love for the theater has always been a priority. That hasn't changed. I got into acting that way. The film work that came up was really a surprise.
The Jews are an artistic people. It's clear from the music, the actors, the writers. They are just artists. In the early part of the 20th century, when they first came over, they had no money, but they still went to theater. The theater and education were the two biggest things in their lives.
I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine.
I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films. I didn't make that money necessarily from the film business, but I eventually made a lot of money and that's what I do. Of course, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate, and I'm pretty content with my life.
I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.
I'm okay for things like theater and stuff but for film, I just didn't think in the right way and I didn't like the business. So I was unhappy. So I was in something that was moderately related to my, what I call my calling or my life's path, which is writing, but it wasn't like the right fit.
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