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I really truly feel like I I've I

learned how to act in the theater. Um,

and that I've been lucky to be able to

walk onto film sets with a really good

amount of experience.

uh that's prepared me to be able to

um in a sense take command of a film set

and be able to get to a place on a film

set. So I'm enormously grateful to the

experiences I had in theater, even the

theater experiences I had where I didn't

think I was that good or or the plays

themselves weren't that good. Um, but

there are definitely um uh experiences

where I felt like I I was able to serve

something,

serve the writing, serve the tone, serve

the comedy, serve the drama. Um, where

something in me went to another level

um for lots of reasons. Um,

and sometimes it's a combination of

things. Why? Why something will just

work? Why, you know,

you know, and the truth is you often

don't even know why.

You just know that something something

worked. It just came together in such a

way. You could have not have imagined

necessarily why,

but you were ready for that. and you,

you know, grabbed that brass ring as it

came around. You weren't afraid of it.

Um, and you held it

and you did the job.

There's nothing you can do but be

terrified. There's there's no pill you

can take or or sermon you can read or

nothing. You just have to realize that

you will be [ __ ] in your pants and

that's just part of the process. And you

just kind of go, there's nothing I can

do about it. I'm going to have to

just throw myself to the wolves and, you

know, hope that I come out alive at the

end. Um, there has never been a preview

that I' that I've experienced where I

didn't seriously want to get incredibly

drunk afterwards, uh, and forget

everything that had just happened on

that stage and hope to God I never ever

had that feeling again. And then every

time I do a play, I have that feeling

again. It's absolutely terrifying.

People just don't understand. It's it's

I mean I can't even think of what the

comparison is, but it's like if if

anybody in any job had to put had to let

everyone see their first draft of

something or their first try at

something. It's it's it's the you

literally feel that you're walking out

there absolutely naked and everyone's

going to know that you've been faking it

all these years and they're going to

they're going to they're going to figure

it out and tell you to get the hell out.

Who let you in here?

You can read a play. You can think you

understand it. you can think that, yeah,

this this could be a good part for me to

challenge myself with

and then you get into rehearsal and it's

it's not as easy as you thought or it's

more complex than you thought or you

read it wrong or in theater you're

trying things. You're experimenting

dayto day when you come into rehearsal

you're searching.

You might attack a scene in a particular

way in rehearsal in one day and the next

day you're going to move on and do a

different scene or different act, not

come back to that scene for a week. But

in that week's time,

you've worked on other scenes. So maybe

you've discovered other things about

that character.

You've gone home. You've lived a life.

You've let things percolate. You're

thinking about it. And then when you

come back to that scene,

you either may have a new way in,

something has been revealed,

you keep working on it, you keep working

on it, you keep working on it, and then

finally you start to get in front of an

audience. You start to share it. An

audience starts to have an effect on

what you're learning about the

character.

There was a time when, you know, there

was a kind of star turn. So, you know,

Lawrence Olivia would walk into the

rehearsal room and he'd know all of his

lines. He'd already basically rehearsed

the part and now they were just putting

in all the other actors, you know. And

this is nothing against Lawrence Livier.

Obviously, he's one of the great actors

of all time, but there's a difference

between

not doing that and coming into a

rehearsal room and learning the lines

with the company because of the way the

company is saying them to you.

It's difficult, I think. I mean, I've

tried. I think it's difficult to learn

lines and not learn how you're going to

say them.

It's difficult to learn them just

neutrally.

When I did Richard and when I did

Richard the Third, I learned the first

three acts, but I tried really hard to

not learn how to say the lines, but just

to know what the lines were.

um because it was a new language and and

I didn't want to spend, you know, the

first three weeks of rehearsal going,

what is it? You know, I was wanting to

figure out what the what the intention

was, not what the word was. And so I I I

did it. And it was not easy to keep

myself separated from how to say them.

There's nothing that comes close to the

experience of performing night after

night.

What you learn about yourself, what you

learn about your stamina,

what you learn about a character, what

you learn about an audience,

and the difference that you can feel

from the first preview, the very first

time that you share it. And usually

that's the night I feel like I'm going

to have a stroke because it's so

terrifying to go out there and share it

with an audience for the first time. You

don't have confidence in it yet. You're

not sure that anything that the choices

you've made are going to work. Um,

and that first preview, that first

experience of sharing it for the first

time and discovering whether what you're

sharing they think is worth sharing

and how off it may be or awful it could

be on that night. First previews are

always incredibly dangerous,

but where it then goes

when you then start getting notes. It's

an interesting experience, too, because

when you're rehearsing a play and you're

learning a play and you're getting up

there and you're beginning to share it

with an audience that you almost have

two halves of your brain, one half of

your brain is trying to be in the

performance and stay there and and be

cognizant of of the journey of the play

and and the other half is trying to do

all the things your director has told

you to do. in your note sessions because

you'll sometimes after a preview you'll

have two hours of notes. So, everyone

gets together in the theater and they

all sit in the audience and and the

director goes through every single

moment in the play that he or she wants

to shift or change or try it this way or

draw. Let's cut that line. Let's do it

here. Whatever it might be. So, there's

a part of your brain when you're

standing on stage, you're now back in

the show that night, but half of your

brain is trying to remember all the

adjustments and the changes and the

notes that you've been given. And the

other half of your brain is trying to be

in the play.

And the most extraordinary moment is

when,

and sometimes you feel this in previews,

more often than not, you don't feel it

until after you've opened that the two

halves of your brain have become one.

You're no longer playing notes. You're

no longer thinking about changes. You're

now in it

and fully in it. And the journey is

yours. And at a certain point, the play

goes from the director giving notes to

it. Now, the actors take it over. Um,

there's of course the great line about I

don't know which director said this, but

it might have been Peter Hall or Trevor

Nun who came about eight weeks after

they'd opened

um to basically take out all the

additions the cast has put into the play

since he was last there. And there's an

incredible excitement in getting up

every night and not necessarily going

I'm gonna hit this the same way every

night, but you know, last night I don't

I didn't get the reaction that I think

this line deserves or didn't really feel

like I had them at this moment. You

know, I need to work on how I get there.

And I think it starts in the scene three

scenes before this one. And so very

often there's a something you're working

on, but it starts much earlier in in the

play.

And

sometimes what I'm looking for

is

people often say, "Oh, your favorite

sound in the theater, it must be

applause.

It must be laughter."

And in fact, my favorite sound in the

theater

is silence.

Because in that silence,

you feel an entire audience pulling

towards you. They're absolutely in that

moment.

And it's almost that that's when you

feel that they they come together as

one. You have an entire audience leaning

forward.

sometimes breathless because something

has happened on stage that was

unexpected or violent or revealing.

It's the most powerful sound in the

world is that silence. So sometimes

you're working toward trying to get that

feeling

that's not about anything but knowing

they are listening.

you know, having just spent uh 12 years

at the head of the old Vic

and walking onto that stage

and feeling in those boards and in that

wood and in that plaster

that our voices bounce back from

that on that stage,

the greatest actors and actresses of

their generation generations.

I've played that stage and you think

John Gilgood

stood on this stage in 1928

and did Richard II

and Ralph Richardson played false staff

on this stage in what Kenneth Tinen says

was one of the greatest performances

that he'd ever seen in his life in the

theater. and Olivier

and Peter Oul

and Richard Burton played Hamlet

and Judy Dench made her debut as Juliet

in Rome and Juliet

and you start to

feel that wow I'm in this profession

that

so many have come before me so many have

laid the foundation have

the very thing I'm standing on

is extraordinarily solid.

The great thing about theater, I mean,

versus film

is no matter how good you might be in a

movie or a TV show,

you'll never be any better.

It's frozen.

But in the theater, I can be better

tomorrow night than I was tonight. I can

be better next Tuesday than I was

tomorrow night.

That's where you learn.

That's where you learn.