Mara Wilson Quotes

If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience.

When you're on stage, you're playing to whoever is in the back of the room, and TV and film is so much more detailed and nuanced, but I think that's what I always wanted to do. As much as I love theater and musical theater and would love to do it again, I really love the subtleties of film and theater acting.

I'm confident when I perform but going into a horrible, boring studio and playing the same thing over and over again is really different to being on stage!

I just love acting. Being in theater or being in television or film, I'm really living out my destiny.

From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.

A live performance is the same no matter what genre it is. Wrestling, rock 'n roll, hosting, acting - it's the same thing.

I think any actor would agree that you can't replace theater. It's immediate. You have the energy of the crowd and every single night it's different.

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.

Live theater to me is much more free than the movies or television.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

I've learnt that there's acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition.

So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing.

Acting in the theatre is fun; acting in film is work.

I don't miss television. It's too much hurry up and sit around, wait till they do this and do that, and get the lighting just right. I'd much rather go out on a stage anywhere and just play and sing for an hour.

I think I'll never stop doing theater because it's a more physical and athletic activity. You can't pull any punches; there are no short cuts, and you have to be physically present and committed. I love the excitement and the response of being in front of a live audience.

The great thing about theater is the doing it again and again and again.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser

Recording wasn't as important to me as actually being to get on stage and act the fool.

On stage you're free. You can say and do things that if you said and did any place else, you'd be arrested.

I can introduce new parts because when you are on stage in front of a very happy audience or people who love what you are doing, you are able to do extraordinary things that you yourself didn't think you could do before.

I think if you're doing a play, you're rehearsing enough that you get to a point where it's freeing again. But in a movie, if you rehearse too much, now you've just shown everybody what you're going to do. And any element of surprise or impulsiveness is taken away.

I've always enjoyed and loved playing live. I relish and cherish it more than anything else because you never know what the performance is going to be.

One of the things I love about the theater is that no one can tell you to stop. Once you're onstage, it's three hours, and whether you're completely off or you're just horrendous, you've got to find a way to leave an impression. There's not that terrible thing that you get when you're making a movie, where you get in your car at the end of the day knowing that something you're not proud of was immortalized on film, and you can't fix it because they won't reshoot it.

I've always got the road. Stand-up makes you so autonomous and self-sufficient that it really helps with that part of show business.