Stage Commitment Quotes

There's such a work ethic involved in theatre that you can't learn in L.A.

Since I got out of grad school at NYU, I've always done as many plays as I can.

If I had my way, I'd always be onstage. But I won't always be able to be onstage.

I just never had time to follow sports. When you're working as often as I was, eight shows a week, you just don't have time to develop interests outside of the theatre.

I will never leave the theater. My heart is there and I love being on stage eight times a week.

No, I've never moved on with a play. I did the original 'Closer' in London but didn't transfer to the West End or Broadway with it. The same is true of 'Iceman': I didn't go to the Old Vic or Broadway with that. I don't know; I feel an allegiance often to the play where you do it first, in the theatre that it's in; you do it for that space.

When plays present themselves, I can't miss 'em. I got to make 'em.

Stage is really hard work. You've got to do it every night. Not like doing it once and walking away.

I was convinced that I was going to be onstage for the rest of my life.

I want to be acting until the day I die!

I don't think there are roles that would attract me to do a long run in the theatre.

When you have a play, you have to be on every night.

I'd like to continue to play until I drop dead on stage or something.

It's not that I'm sick of the theater, don't get me wrong. I'm just tired of the commitment.

I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I'm a philistine. I like the good life too much; I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

It's hard to maintain a life when you do a play. You feel you have to pretend to go through a normal day, knowing that in the evening you'll be doing this.

Of course, the age-old tradition that a star must appear even if he or she is practically dying is an excellent one, but it can be carried too far. I one played a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle with a temperature of 103 and gave sixteen members of the company mumps, thereby closing the play and throwing everybody out of work. There may be a moral lurking somewhere in this, but I cannot for the life of me discover what it is.

It's a question of finding the right thing, if I'm going to be an actor... if I have to get up eight times a week for a number of months, I want to be excited and challenged from the day I start to the day I leave.

A play is a hard thing, particularly in L.A. It's less expensive than in New York, but there's also less of a commitment to people doing plays than in New York. So it's a strange battle.

I've put in as many as 40 weeks a year on stage. It is lonely and restricted, as all artistic life must necessarily be.

As I laid in the hospital bed I started thinking that I had a show to do. I was hoping the Doctor would put me together so I could do the show.

For films, the process is that you work consistently and constantly for 3-4 months and then leave; whereas for a play, you prepare for about a month and then continue performing it for 5 to 6 months.

I would never walk off any show.

I would also like to act, once in a while, but not get up every morning at 5:30 or six o'clock and pound into the studio and get home at 7:30 or eight o'clock at night, or act over and over and over every night on Broadway, either.

I love the stage. I'm always sniffing around to see if there's something I can squidge in quickly.