British Theatre Quotes

Now, when I talk about Shakespeare, I can't talk too much about Gielgud or Olivier. Because nobody knows who I'm talking about.

When I left Cambridge, I applied to regional repertory theaters in the U.K. and got accepted by one of them... And here I am, still at it.

The classical actor in England makes roughly the equivalent of a bus driver.

If only Vivien Leigh had stayed in England, that part would have been mine.

I owe a great deal to Harold Hobson, doyen drama critic of the 'U.K. Sunday Times,' who championed me as Shakespeare's Richard II at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival.

In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.

My first professional role was in 'Romeo and Juliet,' and I played Tybalt, who was Romeo's enemy, in a small production of that in the U.K.

It's often assumed that British actors read Shakespeare and sonnets as we're going to bed at night and we're all very familiar with it.

There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both.

A British actor will savour every syllable of a Shakespearean line, while a French actor will drive to the end of a sentence or a speech with a propulsive rhythm: the thing you never say to a French actor is, 'Take your time.'

I was brought up in Guildford, and I think I used to absorb all the suburban things - seeing coffee mornings, women talking... that stuff, really. I was watching Alan Ayckbourn on some documentary, and he was talking about how he was around a lot of women as a child, listening to all that stuff.

I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.

The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors.

I played a very complex, multidimensional character - Piglet in 'Winnie-the-Pooh' - at age 7 in England.

If these theatres didn't exist, the tradition of British theatre would cease to exist.

When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.

The fact that it's hard to create an original British musical doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.

Everyone the world over talks about British actors and British talent and I think that's because we were trained - until now - in theatre.

British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained.

Tom Stoppard, the English-speaking world's brainiest playwright, thinks that British audiences have grown too dumb to understand his plays.

I listened to a lot of tapes of British theatre actresses and tried to learn from them. As Americans, we don't have such a gift with language.

Stark was my late Grandmother's maiden name. When I joined the acting union in the UK 'Oliver Jones' was taken so I had to come up with something else!

I'd really like to come and do some theatre in the U.K.

To be scrupulously honest, I only met Noel Coward twice in my life, and then briefly, but I heard so much about him at home when I was growing up that I always felt I knew him well.