Tony Harrison Quotes

Tom Hooper did an amazing job in capturing the feel of Victor Hugo's book. I thought some of the performances were incredible. I thought the Bishop would be a nice part to play, and they all made such a fuss of me being there.

I'm for all the actor's struggle, the self-indulgent, painful journey, but I would rather have fun.

There's something so wonderful about being an actor in New York.

There's nothing more fun than acting on stage with a live audience and that immediate feedback.

Live theater is just an incredibly powerful medium, and I think anyone who goes, whether they know about it or not, if they see something that sort of fits with them, it's kind of hard to deny that they had a good time.

Potentially, you do inhabit different worlds. And while there are no specific roles I'm burning to play, as far as acting in the future goes, I'd really like to have done searing work.

I started taking ballet lessons when I was 4, and I was performing in ballet companies when I was 10, and I did summer stock in Miami Beach when I was 12, and finally I said, 'I gotta go to Broadway.'

I don't come from an artistic family, so I didn't know what theater was. I was working on Wall Street in the '90s, and I went to see 'Appointment With a High-Wire Lady' at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and it affected me so deeply. It changed everything I thought about the arts. I quit banking and became an actor.

When I doing dinner theater in high school, I was talking to a woman who had been in the business for a while and I said I want to act, that's all I want to do with my life and she said if you're serious then you need to hone every discipline you can.

You hear about Broadway your whole life, and I learned what it meant to work on Broadway in 'The Phantom of the Opera.'

When I was ten, I did a play at the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, Charles Fuller's first play. He went on to write 'A Soldier's Story,' among other things. I realized, 'Oh, I can be anything doing this.'

I was fascinated by all of it. The sounds of the theater and the audience, their rapture when a play took over and moved them and held them quietly... When the audience was truly moved, it was absolutely quiet. They were in a communion because they were learning the truth about themselves.

The arts were like, there's no opponent. It's just yourself. I'm not saying they don't make the arts a competition with awards and all that, but that's outside the work itself.

I was a housepainter and a landscape nursery man, and all these various odd jobs I had, and started doing community theater.

I was really an actor before I knew I could sing. And I just put the two together and went to musical theater school. But acting is a huge passion of mine, so it doesn't matter which medium as long as I have the opportunity to grow and to learn from a piece of work and work with good people, and on a very good-quality project.

Most theatrical events range in the inaudible. When I went to see 'Mamma Mia,' I thought they were playing it through a megaphone.

Music was my first love; acting was something that wasn't important to me early on.

I got to see my mom do 'Long Day's Journey' in London, which was really beautiful.

I was 17 when I first acted on stage. I was a part of an Urdu adaptation of 'Spartacus' in the titular role.

When I was about 12, I saw Mark Rylance do this play in New York City called 'Jerusalem' and that really changed the game for me.

I'm a drama kid at heart. That is definitely where my heart and soul is. I did 'Hairspray' in high school - I was Seaweed.

It changed my life, being in 'Company.' I didn't think I was going to be an actress.

I paint because I love to paint. If someone buys the prints or whatever, so be it, but it's not my main form of business. As a performer, that is my main form of business.

When you're in a good play and a good production, you find that you're in something that has a life beyond you. You think, 'Oh my goodness, this play's alive.'

I'd studied acting in New York when I left Pierre - that was the big thing that I did. I worked very hard at it, actually.