Tim Matheson Quotes

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. At one point he took the robes he was wearing and just started flipping them up in the air, out of nowhere. And later, an actor said to him, "What was that, George, what were you doing?" And he said, "They were sleeping." You're always trying to catch them.

It was a wonderful experience to live the life for a year; to spend all day doing Shakespeare and then do a play in the evening.

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.

Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.

In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.

The great thing about stage is that you have a live audience.

I want to play King Lear, Macbeth, Benedict, Coriolanus. I wouldn't mind doing Hamlet again. Well, I'm a little old. Perhaps I can rub Vaseline on the audience's eyes.

As an actress who has performed in theater for over 17 years, my experience performing in 'The Color Purple' has been a truly life-changing journey.

Janet Carroll and Robert Pine, Chris Pine's dad, were in my first play, and they were so astonishingly good, I felt it raised my game instantly.

Doing a musical is not just acting. It's total theater. When you have to justify the enormous projection of energy it takes to just go into song and dance, you realized why it's such a humbling experience every time you go into a show.

If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.

There's no such thing as a small part. There are just small actors.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

In theater, there's a lot of work to do to build the characters. It's a great experience.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.

When I was doing theater, I was very successful at believing that I was great, God's gift to the theater.

I've never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you.

I was always the lead role in plays. I like entertaining people. I like when you're on stage doing crazy stuff and the audience gets it.

The art of acting is to pitch good. You do the pitching and hope that the other person catches the ball and does some good pitching back to you.

There's no business like show business.

In general, I find that for videos the acting is more realistic.