A Quote by Toby Stephens
Prior to doing a 'Bond' film, I was a young actor doing classical theater and some BBC dramas. Then, suddenly, I was thrown into this franchise. I had never experienced anything like it.
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I had never met an actress or an actor when I thought that I might like to be one. I had never been around people in show business or from the theater or from movies or anything. And I say that as an encouragement, I don't know some people who want to be doing what I'm doing or be involved in film. You don't have to be from it to get interested and get involved. I certainly wasn't.
In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.
Movies are this thing that came into my life, and it still feels pretend in some way. I kind of do this thing, and I never really accepted this idea that I'm a film actor. That's what I do. I feel like I'm a theater actor that started doing films. Most people have never seen me in a play. They're fun, though.
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.
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.
I started off doing plays as a theater actor. But I never thought of it in terms of it leading anywhere. I was just trying to be the best actor that I could be in the context of what I was doing.
It sounds so incredibly selfish, but you just can't earn the same money doing theater as you can doing television and film. I know that's awful, but you get a mortgage and a family, and suddenly, paying that seems quite important.
It's something that I feel every young person goes through, this idea that they're not doing enough, or that they're stuck. Definitely when I was in high school I was like, 'What am I doing here, I want to be an actor, instead I'm just stuck at school and I'm not doing anything.'
I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. In fact, a lot of my choices that I made were about that very thing. Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that's why I have a good, you know, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé. I'm really - it's what I set out to do as an actor originally.
Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival.
When I was doing theater for all those years in New York, I did a lot of classical theater, wearing big corsets and big dresses and doing dialects. It's interesting that once I moved to TV, I'm playing these scrappy, contemporary toughies.
I was always cycling for my dad. Then the coaches got bigger, and my results got better. Suddenly, the responsibility grows, and I'm doing it for somebody else, I'm doing it for a programme; I'm doing it for the country. I'm doing it for, like, everybody.
I really enjoy doing theater, but doing theater in Seattle is like dropping a brick in a bottomless well. It's gratifying, but it's almost like doing radio. It's ephemeral.
When I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.
I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.
I'm actually doing what I like doing, which is mixing opera music and classical music with soul and folk. And I was writing and talking about what I've actually experienced, and I don't think that's very common.
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