Top 1200 Stage Actors Quotes & Sayings - Page 13

The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.

I'm like the Hulk on stage. It's way over the top. That's Bizarro Chris. Sometimes I get off stage and go What did I say?! I'll watch one of my stand-up specials a year later and go Eww, that was mean.

I left L.A. and moved to Cleveland for four years in the early 2000s or whatever. I came back and thought that everything had changed. I was like, 'Oh my God, I don't think I ever fit in here. And wait, who are all of these celebrities that are not actors? Where did all of the actors go?'

The problem with too beautiful a view is that it's alright for the mulling stage. But for the writing stage, you want to be somewhere without a view, especially if it is very different from what you're writing.

I'm that mild-mannered guy, but when we get on that stage, I think there is a magical force, and everyone sort of turns into a superhero. I get my gear on and I just go to battle. When you hit that stage, something comes on. It creates a different kind of energy.

Then, in 2000, John Reid, Elton John's former manager, asked me to audition for the stage version of The Graduate he was producing. So I worked on it, got the part, and after three weeks' rehearsal I was on stage!

My goal was always to get better roles, and in my case, performing on stage really led to great opportunities. My breakthrough came when I did Calder Willingham's 'End as a Man' on stage and was spotted by Max Arnow, who'd been the casting chief for Columbia.

In India, big stars like Akshay Kumar or Salman Khan do comedy and serious films and we call them great actors. But when it comes to actors of my stature, people rush to typecast me as a comedian without giving a look to all my work.

When I walk on stage, it's a release valve for me. Life is stressful anyway, so therefore, when I walk on stage, it releases all those stressful situations, and I feel good about myself.

I used to work over a bar. That was - there was no stage. I stood over a tiny bar. Louis Prima, rest his soul, he worked there. I was the guy that filled in when he was off the stage.

For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period.

In Chicago it's really a case of the play's the thing - people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors - not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.

[My father] taught me (at least he showed me) a dignified way to be a former president is that once you're off the stage, you're off the stage.

I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.

It's so easy to disappear into your character because there isn't all this fuss around you, and we keep a closed set, and closed off to all crew members, even, unless we're cut. A lot of times, you're doing a scene in a movie and there are literally 35 people standing behind the camera all waiting to do their job, but here they have to be off the stage. On The Office, it is very much just the actors, a cameraman and a boom operator, like a real documentary, like we really are being documented.

I begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself, under my brush. The form becomes a sign for a woman or a bird as I work... The first stage is free, unconscious... the second stage is carefully calculated.

I don't enjoy public performances and being up on a stage. I don't enjoy the glamour. Like tonight, I am up on stage and my feet hurt.

I still get knickers thrown on stage, but not as much as they used to. In fact, I get bloke's boxer shorts thrown on and someone rolled a coconut on stage the other night.

The government should take a decision on whether to allow Pakistani actors in India or not, but I think directors and producers will themselves not cast Pakistani actors seeing the kind of opposition the country is witnessing against them.

When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.

It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.

Effective leaders at a high level tend to be skilled actors. Franklin Roosevelt is said to have to quipped, on being introduced to Orson Welles, that they were the two greatest actors in America. The story may be apocryphal, but the message rings true.

Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

I like actors who are themselves. I know in America you like actors who change their nose or wear a lot of wigs, and they like to take pretty girls and make them super ugly.

I think that at 21, I still look like I'm 17 years old, so I feel like I'm going to be playing teenagers for a while, and that's a very relatable stage in a teenage life for a female - that kind of rambunctious stage.

I think casting a show is an art form in and of itself. We're all so different - the cast is made up partly of real stand-ups, partly of actors, and then partly of just legendary actors.

I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing.

That's where you can find things and modulate your performance and give the other actors something fresh to respond to. We've probably all worked with actors who when it's suddenly your close up, they get sleepy. I don't like that. It's selfish acting, and I won't tolerate it.

Plays are wonderfully different than short stories, first because it's a story that's on a stage, but there's a different sort of tension that appears on stage - you get to see your characters in a different way - like with lights.

People have a hard time going to a club and seeing this business tool on stage that's wholly indicative of everything that rock is not. Rock is not about sitting in an office setting up documents, yet they see someone on stage doing that.

If a chess statistician were to try and satisfy his curiousity over which stage of the game proved decisive in the majority of cases, he would certainly come to the conclusion that it is the middlegame that provides the most decisive stage.

If you can stand on stage and perform a record, you should be able to stand on stage and captivate the audience without the rhyme. You should be a master of ceremonies.

The big difference I think between tv and stage is definitely the immediate buzz that you get. And that's not just as an actor, as an audience member you're getting the chance to have this kind of two-way process where the actors and the audience are experiencing the same thing. With tv you often have to wait months and months down the line to actually get the pay-off. Whereas with theatre it's a very immediate thing.

I think more obvious to others, is that I'm most vulnerable on stage. Even though I know which songs I'm going to play, I try and keep it loose and base my stage time more on what the audience is requesting of me.

There are some actors who have an interest in comedy but they can't say this openly. They do feel insecure about the comedian walking off with all the applause. In fact, I have seen my lines being changed and scenes being reworked to suit certain actors.

In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better.

I've had fish come up on stage, and it's pretty disgusting. I try and discourage that. I discourage anything flying up on stage, actually.

My life is singing. I don't plan on retiring. I plan to die on a stage. I can have a headache but when it's time to sing and I step on that stage there is no more headache.

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

There are good roles for actors of every age now. In fact TV is a breeding ground for new talents. There are so many actors who start their journey with television, learn so much from here and then start try in films and web.

I think, in general, straight actors should be able to play queer roles just as much as queer actors should be able to play straight roles. I think the reason why the debate is there is because we haven't had enough queer actors being cast in anything. People are in need of that representation in general.

I've worked with some terrific actors. The list of guys that came on the 'Columbo' show, I mean they were world-class actors from all over the world - Oskar Werner, Laurence Harvey, Donald Pleasence, you know... foreigners.

Working with [Kyle Chandler] in the scene was like playing tennis. You work with really talented actors, I think they make other actors look really, really good.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life. But I don't see that having a sexy image when you are on stage means that you don't love God. No one knows what I'm really like from that. I like to walk around with bare feet and I don't like to comb my hair. I'm always so glammed up and so diva on stage and that's what they see. People don't understand that... No one knows my personal relationship with God and it's not up to me to prove that to anyone.

I feel that the industry can be sliced into two categories - grateful actors and non-grateful actors. I'm always so appreciative that this has happened for me - and against all odds - as a middle child from Canada. I'm very grateful.

It was like Mama suddenly realized I was good, that she didn't have to apologize for me. It was the strangest feeling. One minute I was on stage with my mother, the next moment I was on stage with Judy Garland. One minute she smiled at me, and the next minute she was like the lioness that owned the stage and suddenly found somebody invading her territory. The killer instinct of a performer had come out in her.

If you go on stage, or on TV, then there is an impetus that comes about to be a persona. A completely different character. But when you're someone like me, you don't want to have a persona. I want to be exactly who I am on stage.

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.

Great actors are people who just meld into the part without calling attention to the fact that they are so-and-so doing this part. They may never become huge stars, but will always, in memory, stay respected actors.

Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.

I try to get on stage whenever I can. I'm always trying to be involved in the theater, doing something on stage, whenever I have downtime. I'm always looking for it.

I've always felt kind of safe on stage, protected. I've talked to other performers about this and they feel the same things, particularly in the live arena. I never get nervous going on stage to do a play. Doing film or television I'll have more butterflies.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn't have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

In my own case, I'm an artist, and I'm really interested in expanding the vocabulary of human action, and basically empowering people through interactivity. I want people to discover themselves as actors, as creative actors, by having interactive experiences.

Sometimes on stage I prefer to feel more glamorous, so I'll go all out when it's a stage outfit like sparkly, colorful, and have a certain shape. If someone is watching it from far away they can maybe remember the shape or the color.

I left L.A. and moved to Cleveland for four years in the early 2000s or whatever. I came back and thought that everything had changed. I was like, 'Oh my God, I don't think I ever fit in here. And wait, who are all of these celebrities that are not actors? Where did all of the actors go?

My understanding is that it's quite difficult for actors in the theater to know anybody but actors in the theater. It's the whole concept of the amniotic fluid surrounding one industry, holding people in place. I've never had a season ticket. I'm always a tourist.

In theatres, you're kind of disconnected. Also, it's way too big for the likes of me. Unless you're Robin Williams or someone that can fill a stage with movement and energy, it just looks like a small man on a big stage.

I get very nervous before I get on the stage, but once I'm on the stage, I'm just, you know, me. Nothing hurts me.