Quote

There's all that brain work involved, remembering all those lines in a script. I find I have to eat a lot of fish, late - but not too late - in the afternoon. Doing theatre, you need to be like an athlete in training.

There are some movies that I would like to forget, for the rest of my life - really! But even those movies that I'd like to forget teach me things.

I have a very good memory for scripts. I can watch a show I like once, then remember about 90% of the script. But ask me who was in it, and I wouldn't have a clue.

There are some movies that I would like to forget, for the rest of my life. But even those movies teach me things.

To my mind, forgetting is a risky strategy for living. Memory is essential to us. It is DNA. We need to remember, and we need to imagine. That's why we have books, writing, fiction.

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.

In question-and-answer sessions after a reading or during an interview, I forget the question if I'm giving too long an answer. And at the end, I can't remember any of the questions. The more anxious I am about remembering, the more likely I am to forget.

When you're on TV, you're looking at a half-page of material, trying to memorize it really quickly. By the time it's on TV, I've already forgotten what I said, but I can still recite my whole role from Shakespeare in the Park. It works a different set of muscles.

One thing I've really never had a problem with was memorizing lines. Most of the time I don't memorize the lines until we're on the set shooting the scene.