West End Quotes

Ever since I was little it was programmed into me that London is where great theatre occurs and all the big shows you love start there.

I went to an ordinary primary school, and then I started performing in a show called 'Billy Elliot' on the West End, and that was sort of my drama school.

In my head, I have the most sensational singing voice. I perform concerts to thousands in the shower. The reality is I can hold a tune. The dream is a West End musical one day - no, really!

I'll always be an Essex girl at heart but I've matured and I've evolved and with my work I'm in the West End all the time.

England is a mecca for actors who want to do the classics.

I tried to sing 'What's Going On' with Amy Winehouse once at an old cinema in the West End. There was a funk band that had members of both of our bands playing in it, but it was the worst kind of place to sing bad karaoke because everyone there was an amazing singer or musician.

Les Mis' was an amazing experience, to be in the original cast of 'Les Miserables,' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' God bless it that was fantastic, at the London Palladium the biggest theatre in London the most successful show that has ever been at the London Palladium, that was fantastic.

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.

I used to have a list of things from my school buddies of what kind of art material they wanted. I'd go up to the West End of London and spend the whole day knocking stuff off.

Do I think the West End relies too heavily on star names? Yes, I do, and it can result in miscasting and sub-standard stuff. Not always, but occasionally.

The only shows I saw as a kid were that holy trinity: 'Les Miz,' 'Cats,' 'Phantom.'

After a West End run, in which I was promoted to Laertes, I joined the RSC in 1972. I had fulfilled my dream.

I've always wanted to perform on the London stage.

To get to do a West End play is once in a lifetime chance.

I was in the play 'Fat Pig in the West End,' which is a comedy but has dramatic moments.

I've had tonsilitis and I'm not sure if I can sing on Saturday [whilst out on the town in the West End]

There's something about doing theatre in London - it sinks a little bit deeper into your soul as an actor. It's something about the tradition of theatre, about performing on the West End stage.

'Waiting for Godot,' when it first came out in 1950, was a very different sort of play to the plays that were in the West End at that time in London, because most of those plays were what we call drawing-room comedies.

I had to go to an audition for a rather large West End musical set on a Greek island. I didn't realise that you had to go with sheet music to give to the pianist. I took a Mark Bolan CD, a small ghetto blaster and then sang along. It was absolutely appalling.

Mark Rylance is one of my heroes. I saw 'Jerusalem' four or five times, twice in New York, twice in London.

My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.

Funnily enough, I did a play called 'Jumpy' on the West End before I did 'Divergent,' and there was an essence of that character I played, called Cam, in Will. In the sense of his vulnerability, and... he had a sense of humor that comes out of adversity, similar to Will.

The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights and sounds. The City is getting its living - the West-End but enjoying its pleasure.

Money's never an issue. I can go and work for a small studio theatre somewhere if it's a play I really care about, or do TV or a big commercial West End show.

Musical theatre is something that I always wanted to be a part of, and my first ever role on the West End as Joseph in 'Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat' gave me a taste for it.