Roger Rees Quotes

The hard thing is making sure you work with wonderful people and that you get something out of it so that you can get better as an actor.

‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ is a wonderful machine. It’s one of the great farces, and it’s astonishing to remember that this is written by the same man who wrote ‘Hamlet,’ ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ or ‘Cymbeline.’ It’s so similar, and yet the form is so different.

I have a little studio in Chinatown, and I sometimes go there and rearrange my brushes. But I would have to stop acting altogether in order to become a painter. At the moment, I’m still interested and active as an actor and director. Besides, I rather think acting and painting are all part of the same creative urge.

Now, when I talk about Shakespeare, I can’t talk too much about Gielgud or Olivier. Because nobody knows who I’m talking about.

No lens is quick enough to track the movement of the human body. The molecules are always moving.

Daring to love someone is something we all do.

‘Nicholas Nickleby’ was the best example, where 43 people could make an audience of 1,500 look at a fingernail at any given moment. It was so controlled, and yet it was a group of disparate individuals. It was a happy, constructive time, and it seemed to be an active discussion of what makes the theater work.

Most of my enjoyable times in the theater have been working in a group.

You might be the best Hamlet of your generation in the bathroom, but unfortunately, you have to come out and do it on stage, and it’s best to do it to people who would fill the house.

Arthur Winslow is one of the great parts.

Anything I do is as theatrical as I can get it.

All this thing that L.A. doesn’t have any love for the theater isn’t true.

Nothing in the world in perfect. Even a still photograph.

The Elizabethan mind wanted and demanded that one word could mean 50 things. What Shakespeare offers us is not ambiguity; it’s choices.

The loser, the fool, is embraced in England because there is a recognition of silliness there that allows a person to keep his ambitions and desires at a certain distance. Just being in the race is enough.

I thought acting was just going on and remembering all of one’s lines.

They said my voice was terrible, nervous, and spotty and that I must go away and learn how to use it properly. I must admit I was rather agape, since I had never thought about making my voice better.

Everything happens every night for this audience, and it’s a very special occasion to come to the theatre.

I like to do really good things. But ‘good’ – witness Charles Dickens – doesn’t mean ‘not popular.’

I directed Bebe Neuwirth in ‘Here Lies Jenny’ at the Post Street Theatre. I was gobsmacked – the audiences were extremely knowledgeable, affectionate, interested, and not cynical.

I love to argue and share bright ideas in a rehearsal room, and when you live with somebody who is working on the same show, the delight can go on all evening!

History is with us until we learn from the suffering of the past.

Now, of course, we know there has been an end to apartheid in South Africa, but what excited me was seeing it in the context of history.

I think like an actor when I’m acting, and I think like a director when I’m directing.

I don’t think perfection is possible. I think you can attempt to reach perfection, but I don’t think it’s a possible thing. I think perfection is a moving point, and we spend our artistic lives chasing it.

I’ve learned from the greatest people, and I’ve got wonderful things to pass on.

I was 36 when I played Nicholas Nickleby.

You may be modest and un-egotistical in your life; I’m quite ordinary. But I play big egotistical parts.

Some of the finest Shakespeare has been done recently by college theater programs. I’ll tell you what these young kids have: They have a natural authority in Shakespeare. They feel a right to do it. And once they honor the humanity of it, the rhythm of the verse comes with it.

My first acquaintance with ‘Peter Pan’ was back when I lived in South London. I was at art school, and I needed to earn money, so I got a job as a stagehand at the Wimbledon Theatre, and ‘Peter Pan’ was on tour there with Donald Sinden, who was playing Captain Hook.

If you take away a lot of the pretension and grandness from Shakespeare, a true poeticism is revealed.

Sometimes the most excruciating experiences in rehearsals and performances yield the most beautiful work.

I was a skinny 17-year-old.

In Tom Cone’s work nothing is easy.

After I left the R.S.C., I did a musical, ‘Masquerade,’ where I played a rabbit. I was the lead.

Well-written plays deserve to be learned from and understood properly, both by actors and audiences alike, and Rattigan’s very human characters help us do that.

My neighborhood in South London was very Dickensian.

I was an art student when I was a boy, and as an art student you don’t have to talk to anyone – you just have to paint really wonderful paintings. It’s very unlike being an actor, where you have to talk all the time.

I got out of this school and went to Camberwell College of Arts, a terribly prestigious thing to do. I was there to be a painter. And I sketched so well that, a year later, I was sent to Slade School of Fine Art, one of the great art schools.

I am an anthologist, you see. I sort of make anthologies for people.

‘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 wish I’d played Coriolanus.

Exercising choice is a good thing.