With my background, I came out of the theater.

I think the thing is with a movie that has this much science fiction in it; you need characters who are more science fact, if you know what I mean, than they are human.

I think it talks about that there needs to be some proactive attack against drugs infiltrating our culture.

If you have the skill, then you can move as you age.

If there's no craft there, then once the looks go, there goes your career.

James Cameron has always been way ahead of the curve in terms of the use of technology in his movies.

I think people believe that I give ant aura of someone who has both feet on the ground.

When I started off many years ago, I made a determination that there were certain roles I didn't want to play.

I came into the industry at a time when there weren't a lot of choices to what you could do.

There are lots of stories about my culture that I think bring a whole other perspective to who we are and where we have been and how we got here that I think need to be done.

Film and television is just a different technique in terms of how to approach the camera but basically the job is the same; but what you learn as a craft in theater, you can then learn to translate that into any mediums.

Unfortunately, most actors want to play off their own personal mystique and good looks and whatever, but that will only carry you but so far.

Basically, the actor's job is to pay attention to the script.

I love doing movies but I loved doing theatre just as much.

The advice that I usually give to young actors is that if you can create a character for the stage and keep that character fresh for at least 6 months that means you're doing the show eight times a week.

Yes, I would love to play one of the leads in one these movies and have all those challenges and deal with all those complications, but the business being what it is, there is a slot for me in these kinds of films, so I enjoy them, and I enjoy the people that I work with.

With my background, I came out of the theater.

I think it talks about the fact that there are black people in the world who have tremendous amount of talents and have no channel through which they can those talents.

I would love to play the villain, but again, it sort of what happens in this industry.

One, I had never worked with John Woo before and I wanted to see what that was like, and two, Ben Affleck is a friend, so it would be fun to work with him again.

Accolades are there to congratulate you but also to make you understand that it's not over. You now have to continue trying to improve the craft and keep going. It's not something to rest on.

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.

Playing in front of an audience was just such a turn-on for me, and you have 200 people in the audience and it's like doing live theater. And filming something that goes to millions of people several weeks later, it's an interesting dynamic.

I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.

I'm supposed to be a pretty good theater actor.

Journalism as theater is what TV news is.