Getting work in theater has always been sort of cyclical.

There is some sadness for me now about acting because it used to be that there was a reverence for actors.

All of the generations go to what is chic for them, and theater seems to be an older generation's art form.

Getting work in theater has always been sort of cyclical.

I mean, there are times when you aren't working, but still believe that work will come.

People who call themselves actors and can't ever get work; they do need to get another profession.

Don't forget the prices are so high in theater; it isn't really where a young person can go on a date and buy two tickets and take someone out anymore.

In theater, the wellspring of the character comes from the doing of it, like a trial by fire, but in front of an audience.

The staff, stage managers, ushers all behaved as if they respected the actors.

I have never been interested in specific roles.

For anyone with half a brain they can see that this play is about the human condition.

Acting is very start and stop.

When I see what I want, I do it.

We all need to go to good theater; that is what I believe will save it.

You can't just trust to luck; you have to really listen to what that character is telling you.

I know people like spectacle, but I'm interested in moving people.

I believe in things that move people, if the audience isn't deeply caught up and moved to either laughter or tears then I don't think it is theater.

At this point the theater America is in such a precarious place.

It is so important to get respect for what you do and at the same time give it.

I think in small towns like this one, whether you're a man or a woman, you basically do what there is to do.

I like time off because I also have a life outside of theater.

But today I felt different, today I forgot how long it takes to get into the skin of a character and I remembered it, because today I actually got into that skin and it felt so different.

I talked with Brian Stokes Mitchell, who agreed with me that if you have a gift there is always stuff to do.

I find that there are few reviews that extol women as wonderful artists.

All of the generations go to what is chic for them and theater seems to be an older generations art form.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

To do theater you need to block off a hunk of time.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

Sheer flattery got me into the theater. Flattery always works with me, particularly the flattery of women.

Actually, I didn't like Dartmouth very much, but the whole theater scene I really liked.

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.

You have to transmit to them what it's like being in the theater. And it has to come from somewhere inside you and not by being like what somebody did last year.

Unless an entire row of people got up in the middle of a performance and left the theater in disgust, I felt as though I hadn't done my job.

I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

And I'm in favor of that because I have a gay son, who's a very successful theater designer.

Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.

I started acting when I was 10, doing musical theater. I was a brunette at that time. I was always cast in all the exotic parts.

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

I really would rather have gone to New York, since all my training had been in theater, but I didn't have the guts to go there alone. I knew only one person in New York, and that was a man. What I needed was a woman. That's the way Southern girls thought.

I've always just gone with the best role, and I don't care if it's in theater, film or television.