When I get a beautifully written piece of material, I immediately start imagining how I would interpret it. I love just daydreaming about it for months, breaking it down, seeing where I can spin something. How I can turn this into the most fun ride for the audience that I can make it? That's my job.
— Laurie Metcalf
I like to let the work speak rather than to have to talk about it.
I'm so thrilled to be here on the set of 'Supergirl!'
I don't like the camera. I get very self-conscious with it and then spend way too much time not looking self-conscious instead of being free, as I do on stage, to do my work.
I like contemporary, bare-boned writing. I don't like having the language that I barely understand get in the way of me interpreting it over to an audience. It's this barrier that I don't want to have to attack.
A dream job is to walk right past hair and makeup.
I wasn't turning down film roles, let's put it that way. I was never really on that radar.
I'm not trying to blow out a camera lens or make the audience's hair go straight back from my sheer volume, sheer energy level.
I don't like working in front of a camera.
Really, I'll go anywhere at any time to continue working in theater - it's a passion that I'm thankful I still have. It keeps me creative and on my toes and meeting great people. I can't imagine a better way of working than on a play.
I've been directed by other actors, and being an actor doesn't make you a good director.
Every part I get, I just think I'm so lucky. They're so hard to get, you know.
When I go to see something I'm in, or my friends are in, it's like a home movie. When I just go to the movies and don't know anyone in it, then it's a real movie.
I almost never give interviews. It's not because I want to play hard to get. It's just that I never seem to have anything interesting to say.
I'm happy whenever I'm in a rehearsal room. I've always gotten all my energy and creativity in there.
I tend to root for characters who have a lot of negative qualities, but what's driving them forward is their passion. They're on a mission, and maybe their approach is misguided, but you can't fault them for giving 150%.
I used to drive myself crazy by thinking, three days later, 'Ugh, why didn't I play it like that? Ugh, now that line makes sense to me.'
I'm incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to bring Mae to work with me as I take on the guest role of 'Mary McGowan.'
'Three Tall Women' is kind of fascinating. I had never seen it itself, and I imagine the audience will find it very intriguing to watch the reveal of who these people are and how they interact in the second act.
I was always a secretary in the early days, before we decided we were brave enough to join Equity and see if this thing has any legs.
I had accidentally gotten a laugh on a line in a play I was in during high school. I got hooked, but I had no idea I would ever be able to support myself by acting. I knew no one in the business. I was from the Midwest. No one within a radius of a thousand miles was doing anything like that.
I don't know if ISU helped me become what I am, but I know that if I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't be what I am today.
I can't even call it work. I'm a creative-a-holic. I love the tearing into new material.
Onstage I'm the one in control - I'm not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It's very freeing.
When one thing ends, you put it away and start from scratch on the next thing.
I work just as hard and have just as much fun whether in a 50-seat house or in a 1000-seat house. It's a luxury to be in a tiny space every once in a while and a rush to be on a giant stage every once in a while.
I was too practical to major in theater. Acting - what was I going to do with acting? There was no future in it.
Theater opened up a whole new world for me. It was a freedom I'd never known before.
I like to play a wide range of characters. The more they're unlike me, the better I like it.
I want to be thinking as quickly as I need to as soon as I hit the stage. I want to have a vocal warm-up.
I watch episodes of 'Rosanne' now where I don't even know what the ending's going to be.
That was the beauty of 'Roseanne' and Roseanne herself. It could go dark; it could do issues.
I am a kind of competitive person. I am competitive with myself. I won't let anything go until I am satisfied with how it is.
I watch the Oscars in my pajamas like everybody else.
I gravitated back to theatre again, and when I heard about this little independent movie called 'Lady Bird,' I thought, 'This will be a project where I can dip my toe back into the water.'
No matter how many times you've done it, the early stages of getting a show up on its feet is very hit and miss. There seem to be thousands of options on every page to discover.
My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get.
I'm hideously shy as myself, but on stage I can run around naked and bite the heads off fish.
One of the hardest things about directing is just to be patient and remind yourself that you've been in Week 1 of a rehearsal process yourself, and you know what it feels like.
You know, if a TV show dropped into my lap out of the blue, I would have a hard time turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV.
I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.
I was an office secretary for a long time. A good secretary.
I've loved every minute of every hour I've spent doing theatre.
