LAURIE METCALF

Every part I get, I just think I'm so lucky. They're so hard to get, you know.

When I go to see something I'm in, or my friends are in, it's like a home movie. When I just go to the movies and don't know anyone in it, then it's a real movie.

I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.

I almost never give interviews. It's not because I want to play hard to get. It's just that I never seem to have anything interesting to say.

I've been directed by other actors, and being an actor doesn't make you a good director.

I was an office secretary for a long time. A good secretary.

I was too practical to major in theater. Acting - what was I going to do with acting? There was no future in it.

I'm hideously shy as myself, but on stage I can run around naked and bite the heads off fish.

You know, if a TV show dropped into my lap out of the blue, I would have a hard time turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV.

When one thing ends, you put it away and start from scratch on the next thing.

One of the hardest things about directing is just to be patient and remind yourself that you've been in Week 1 of a rehearsal process yourself, and you know what it feels like.

I like to play a wide range of characters. The more they're unlike me, the better I like it.

Really, I'll go anywhere at any time to continue working in theater - it's a passion that I'm thankful I still have. It keeps me creative and on my toes and meeting great people. I can't imagine a better way of working than on a play.

Theater opened up a whole new world for me. It was a freedom I'd never known before.

My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get.

I work just as hard and have just as much fun whether in a 50-seat house or in a 1000-seat house. It's a luxury to be in a tiny space every once in a while and a rush to be on a giant stage every once in a while.

I've loved every minute of every hour I've spent doing theatre.

I'm happy whenever I'm in a rehearsal room. I've always gotten all my energy and creativity in there.

Onstage I'm the one in control - I'm not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It's very freeing.

I had accidentally gotten a laugh on a line in a play I was in during high school. I got hooked, but I had no idea I would ever be able to support myself by acting. I knew no one in the business. I was from the Midwest. No one within a radius of a thousand miles was doing anything like that.

I'm not trying to blow out a camera lens or make the audience's hair go straight back from my sheer volume, sheer energy level.

I want to be thinking as quickly as I need to as soon as I hit the stage. I want to have a vocal warm-up.

I was always a secretary in the early days, before we decided we were brave enough to join Equity and see if this thing has any legs.

I don't like the camera. I get very self-conscious with it and then spend way too much time not looking self-conscious instead of being free, as I do on stage, to do my work.

No matter how many times you've done it, the early stages of getting a show up on its feet is very hit and miss. There seem to be thousands of options on every page to discover.