I never planned to become an actor.
The theater community will always remain a big part of my life, and I hope to re-join the cast of 'The Color Purple' at some point down the road.
Broadway was weird.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor in classics like Shaw and Shakespeare and Chekov and Ibsen.
I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'
Somewhere during the 'Next to Normal' Broadway run, I found myself learning more about myself onstage than in real life, and I truly realized the beautiful, tremendous, extraordinary gift that is performing.
Right after I left drama school, I had a job.
I'd done acting at a local drama school on Saturdays. I just enjoyed it. It never entered my mind I could possibly do it for a career.
That's what I've wanted to do my whole life, just act. When I was younger, I loved to entertain people. I always used to make up dance routines, do little plays. I love to perform, basically.
I studied drama in high school, and when I was 18, I studied at the Actors Studio in New York. Then I moved to London when I got engaged to Bryan Ferry, and I studied at the National Theatre there.
My brother's my teacher, my mentor, and we both learnt all the acting basics from our father.
I think the first role I ever played was Mr. Bumble in a production of 'Oliver.'
The most rewarding thing is being on Broadway. I went into Cabaret as a replacement and was really challenged beyond anything I could have imagined.
I started acting as a way to support myself.
When I was about 12, I spent the summer writing four plays on my dad's old typewriter for a school play competition. And I wrote little comic bits at secondary school and at university.
When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
I'm grateful that I have a theater career because television isn't kind to you when you're over forty.
I always wanted to be an actor. I was one of those lucky kids - or cursed kids - who always knew what he wanted to do.
I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived.
First off let me say, I've wanted to be an actress since I was a little girl.
I started off in comedy, but that's just where I got my work. I've always been an actor.
I was at Elon University in North Carolina for two years pursuing my BFA. And after my sophomore year, I was cast in the Broadway Tour of 'West Side Story.' I just kind of - it always was my favorite show growing up.
When I told my parents, 'I'm going to be an actor,' they screamed and wept and freaked out.
Broadway was always sort of my trajectory before I found film and television - that would be really tremendous.
Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time.
