The difference between working with actors that have put their time in the theater and just straight film and television actors is that you trust theater actors a lot more. You know that they're seriously more trained than anyone else because theater is the best place to grow as an actor.
It's a tough transition really for theater actors to adjust to television or film, and all of these years later, I still have a tendency to play it too big.
Before I did any television or film, I did years and years of theater. Television and film stuff, even though it went on for a good, healthy number of years, almost felt like a diversion from theater.
I did enjoy theater. I actually do prefer making films and television, but it was a learning experience for me, because I got into television at 5 and film at 11, and theater was something I completely bypassed.
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 looked at theater, in the sense that theater is unmanipulated. If I want to pay more attention to one character on stage than another, I can. I think there's not enough theater in film and not enough film in theater, in a way.
Because of the power of television, I was visible to everybody all over the world. But there are many things in the theater that are more fulfilling and that I look forward to doing more. But really, I love it all: theater, film, television.
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.
Theater will cast in a more open way; Denzel Washington might play Richard III. Television and film don't really cast openly like that. The theater world has always been a leader in diversity.
I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both.
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.
Theater is completely different from film or television. It has a beginning and a middle and an end and it's different every night. And it's far preferable to any other except in the sense of not getting paid, people who want to eat should do film and television.
I went to a theater arts school, so I'm interested in many different projects, whether it be film, television or even live theater. I'm a performer. That's what I do. That's what I want to do.
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.
I think television is moving more into movies, particularly with serialization and almost cinematic proportions and expectations. A show like 'Game of Thrones' is a perfect example of that, or even a show like 'The Wire,' which isn't all about instant gratification it's about inviting someone into the long experience of television the way you'd be invited into a theater for two hours. So I think in that way, and the quality of writing in television is probably much better than most film writing.
The fact that I wound up doing television and film was just a thing that happened, but I was trained for the theater, and what goes on in the theater has nothing to do with special effects.