85 Quotes by Roger Rees

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.

My neighborhood in South London was very Dickensian.

I've always thought like I'm really a 3-feet-high comic trapped in a leading man's body... but then I played Nicholas Nickleby, and suddenly I was heroic.

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.

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

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!

'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.

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

What I strive to do is to make the theater experience something that people remember and recall rather than dismiss because it was less like their everyday experiences. So, I'm less interested in internal emotionalism and much more in making the audience laugh and cry by the devices that we use as theater actors.