Douglas Hodge Quotes

I sit every once in a while and I think about plays and films I can do with William Petersen into our eighties. He's the most incredible scene partner I've ever had.

When it comes to writing musicals, you write the best piece you can. Then, its destiny is in the hands of the actors and the director.

A play is not a play until it's performed, and unless it's a one-person play that is acted, directed and designed by the author, many other people will be deeply involved in the complicated process that leads to its performance.

Being an actor helps me direct a little bit, when I do that, which I haven't been able to do that much, but I plan to in the future. There are a lot of reasons for that, but certainly because I feel like you know how to talk to actors, and you know what they need from you if you've been one yourself.

I've directed a couple of times in the theater, but I wouldn't make a habit of it because it's too consuming.

I took an acting class at Cerritos Junior College and I did a handful of plays, maybe five or six plays.

I've always been very comfortable in a set environment. All the collaborating going on, seeing how actors work - it all excites me.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.

I come from a tradition where the writer writes a play for the actors, rather than for himself, and the dialogue is made to work onstage, so it needs actors to help shape it. So you never get a play right straightaway.

I loved working on Of Mice and Men. It was a wonderful group of people. John Malkovich is to me one of the best actors around right now-and a lot of fun to work with.

I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.

I don't get nervous when I'm directing a play. It's not like acting.

As an actor, you're always changing.

I had some experience writing collaboratively when I wrote for the theatre.

When you're doing a legitimate play, if you have a company of 12, it's considered a big cast.

Working with actors who are directors is magnificent. Because they understand the art form intimately, and they know exactly how everything works.

I've been in leadership roles on Broadway, and it's one thing to lead a Broadway company - you're with those people for a year straight, and you're doing that same show, eight shows a week. It's quite another when you carry on the story... You go beyond that, and you ride the wave of a character.

Compared to film or television, theater is more interactive, collaborative.

While my megalomania knows no bounds, directing is one thing I have never really done. I directed a couple of plays. That was the extent of it.

On stage, I have felt most fulfilled as a playwright, for everything I create gets to grow and evolve with collaboration from directors, actors, and so on.

Jayne Houdyshell and I - when I was 17 years old - did summer stock together at the Timber Lake Playhouse in Mt. Carroll, IL. She was the leading lady of the company, and I was an intern.

There were a couple of things I lost sleep over with the play 'Frost/Nixon,' so I went back and addressed them a bit more in the film.

My first real job as a director was working with Robbie Baitz on his play 'Three Hotels.' It was an incredible collaboration.