I started off on stage because it was the only work I could get. I haven't been back for 11 years. I think any stage experience is good experience, as far as being an actor is concerned.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think if you're an actor, then you can work on stage - but if you've never done it before, you're going to have picked up a few things that you're going to need to change when you're working on stage.
I did a show back when I was in high school - so I was about 17 - and it was the first time I was on stage. I never even thought about being an actor before that, but after that experience, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
There is probably some great acting that goes on in movies from people who have never been on a stage, but if you are in for the long haul, you'd be missing an enormous part of what being an actor is if you're not part of theater.
I've spent a long time learning my way around a stage as an actor, but this I don't know as well. Humbly, I'm excited to get with a band and perform regularly as an artist and see what I can learn and how I can grow in that space.
I began to work the stage and get the audience into it. I also learned how to have fun out there. It is something I will never forget.
I'm not trying to take anything away from film acting, because it's also really hard, and I worship the people who are great at it. But to actually have to go out on stage night after night and do it with your audience right there is so wild and scary and exciting and fun and all the things that I remember loving about it.
People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually.
I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed.
I'm one of relatively few stage-trained actors who doesn't much like acting on stage. It feels kind of like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, which I did when I was eight. When it was all over, I was glad I had done it, but most of the time when it was actually happening, I was just kind of hanging on for dear life.
Being on stage is a seductive lifestyle. My advice to aspiring actors is think twice. People sometimes go into acting for the wrong reasons - as a shortcut to fame and fortune. If these goals are not attained, they feel a bitter disappointment.