Stage to Screen Quotes

The most dramatic moves I have made as an actor have been from stage to screen and from sitcom to drama.

Film and television is just a different technique in terms of how to approach the camera but basically the job is the same; but what you learn as a craft in theater, you can then learn to translate that into any mediums.

When I chose to do 'Carrie,' I never had done anything on camera before. I was always onstage, so everything surprised me. Just going on set and walking into a makeup trailer and seeing Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore - 'Wow, I am part of this ensemble.'

I'm very aware of the fact that Broadway musicals being brought to the screen are very few and far between, and it's important to continue that relationship between Broadway and film. It's a privilege and an honor for me to be instrumental in some way in keeping that alive.

Fate destined me to play Fagin. It was the part of a lifetime, and I was the only actor to be in the stage production and in the film.

I did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.

I think it's just important to be always bouncing between TV and theater, and hopefully I'll get to do movies at some point.

Making a film of a work you've played for six weeks gives you intimate knowledge of the character. By the time you go in front of the camera you've worked out the behavior and life of a character.

I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part.

I'm sort of one of those weird actors who whenever I do a play, I think, 'Oh, we should film this,' as opposed to have to belt it out of ourselves in a theater auditorium.

I love doing improv, and I swear by it, and I encourage people to take classes, and blah blah blah. But it's always been interesting how it doesn't necessarily translate to television.

I thought I'd never do film, let alone television. I was a diehard theater nut.

If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.

'The Fugitive Kind,' 'Rope,' 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' - I watched all these as a way of reminding myself that you can do a movie based on a play. You can do a movie that stays in one place for a long stretch.

On Broadway and in the United States it's very different - people crossover all the time into television. I think that we'll get there [in London] in the end, but it has to start with who comes to see you in the musical and whether they can see beyond the dancing and the singing.

Sitcoms are like summer stock. You put it up in three days, and then you do it in front of an audience, so it's a really great transition from theatre into camera work.

People think that theater actors are too big for the camera. It's like, 'No, we're actors and we adjust for our audience.'

When I was in school, and even after, I did a lot of classic plays, and I guess it sort of extended into film.

Film is limitless, but some stage presentations on film can look too theatrical.

If I could transform my stage life to the movies, I'd be Jack Nicholson.

The film world is always looking for great source material, and Broadway has traditionally and historically been a place to go.

Honestly, I actually would really love to see more musical theatre actors do the movie adaptations of shows - I think that would be really great to see.

I was a Hollywood musical fan as a kid, and I know how rare it is for someone who originates the Broadway role to get to then do it on screen.

To adapt a play into a movie, you have to change it.

You just have to re-wire your brain when you're shifting from the stage to the screen or the silver screen or the HD flat screen.