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Roger Rees [1944-2015] Welsh

Rank: 102
Actor

Roger Rees was a Welsh actor and director, widely known for his stage work. He won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

Quote	Tags	Rank
Everything happens every night for this audience, and it's a very special occasion to come to the theatre.		101
I was at a pretty rough school, and the only thing I was good at was art.		102
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.		103
Sometimes the most excruciating experiences in rehearsals and performances yield the most beautiful work.		104
I wish I'd played Coriolanus.		105
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.		106
Anything I do is as theatrical as I can get it.		107
Nothing in the world in perfect. Even a still photograph.		108
No lens is quick enough to track the movement of the human body. The molecules are always moving.		109
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.		110
Arthur Winslow is one of the great parts.		111
Rattigan wrote some very good plays.		112
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.		113
Rattigan's world demanded unwavering trust in principles, loyalty, and virtue. At the time of this play - Rattigan was writing this play in 1947 about an incident that took place in 1914 - should a boy say he didn't do something, his father would believe him; a British father would take the defense of his son's honor to his grave.		114
That's been the tragedy of my life, actually. I've always looked younger than I am.		115
I was 36 when I played Nicholas Nickleby.		116
I am an anthologist, you see. I sort of make anthologies for people.		117
I'm really interested in the form, putting one piece up against another and finding something corroborative in another voice. I've done a lot of that.		118
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.		119
After I left the R.S.C., I did a musical, 'Masquerade,' where I played a rabbit. I was the lead.		120
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.		121
I joined the Royal Shakespeare Co. with no experience whatsoever - I'd never been to a drama school or anything. But I was strong and could lift things, I could move scenery about.		122
Sometimes I think I'll go off and be a milkman or a greengrocer, some easy job.		123
Even Shakespeare gives you a scene off.		124
I usually played comic lovers or losers - weak, ineffectual men.		125
My neighborhood in South London was very Dickensian.		126
I just do what I'm asked, really.		201
I think like an actor when I'm acting, and I think like a director when I'm directing.		202
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!		203
In the Victorian age, actors played Romeo until they were 60 or 70 years old.		204
When it was announced I had won the Tony Award, I was in Bangkok doing a movie with Judi Dench. I remember coming back from the location to the Oriental Hotel and hearing someone yelling across the reception area, 'You've won the Tony!' It was wonderful and strange to be halfway around the world.		205
If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be doing sitcoms.		206
More people saw me in one episode of 'Cheers' than would ever see me in a play.		207
Television is an important part of how we communicate.		208
The classical actor in England makes roughly the equivalent of a bus driver.		209
All this thing that L.A. doesn't have any love for the theater isn't true.		210
We did a black 'Julius Caesar' in which the predominant accent was Caribbean. This offends many people, you know. I also had a Chinese Marc Anthony. I also managed - this caused a great shock - I also got some white guys in it as well!		211
I want to play King Lear, Macbeth, Benedict, Coriolanus. I wouldn't mind doing Hamlet again. Well, I'm a little old. Perhaps I can rub Vaseline on the audience's eyes.		212
There's something very fine and lucid and rich in this tradition of the English actor.		213
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.		214
I thought acting was just going on and remembering all of one's lines.		215
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.		216
So, suddenly I was an actor. I don't remember being nervous. I learned to be nervous later.		217
In Tom Cone's work nothing is easy.		218
I like working with authors who are a bit pesky.		219
Mostly, theater becomes blander and blander as everyone wants the same thing they saw before. The good plays are the ones that don't allow you to do that.		220
Exercising choice is a good thing.		221
Now, when I talk about Shakespeare, I can't talk too much about Gielgud or Olivier. Because nobody knows who I'm talking about.		222
I've been with Shakespeare all my life.		223
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.		224
It doesn't seem Shakespeare works if you turn him into a religion.		225
The sense of popularity in an actor is essential.		226
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.		301
The whole point is it's about getting as many people to come and see the play as you can.		302
I used to be the voice of Virgin Atlantic in America, and some people only know me for that.		303
If you take away a lot of the pretension and grandness from Shakespeare, a true poeticism is revealed.		304
The Elizabethan mind wanted and demanded that one word could mean 50 things. What Shakespeare offers us is not ambiguity; it's choices.		305
I'm astonished to say, but people are really pleased to hear what happened to me, the way I got a little bit more confident, the people I've met, and the things I didn't know.		306
History is with us until we learn from the suffering of the past.		307
I do one thing Gielgud didn't: I play the ukulele.		308
Daring to love someone is something we all do.		309
Gerry Schoenfeld told me 'Les Parents Terribles' was not going to sell, even though we had Kathleen Turner and Jude Law in the cast. So we called it 'Indiscretions.'		310
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.		311
I've learned from the greatest people, and I've got wonderful things to pass on.		312
I love to see people blossom.		313
I was a skinny 17-year-old.		314
I don't know why, but I was really good in that first play.		315
'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.		316
People very often say to actors that they admire their careers, and I rather think that what's implied by that is that we have a choice in the matter. When really, most actors, me included, do whatever comes along next.		317
If you live in the States, you have to join a gym.		318
I've often thought I'm a short music hall comedian stuck in a leading man's body.		319
I was really serious about painting, so I could never be a Sunday painter. You can't just switch it on and off.		320
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.		321
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.		322
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.		323
Most of my enjoyable times in the theater have been working in a group.		324
'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.		325
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.		326
'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.		401
The shields were enormous. In 'Julius Caesar,' I died early in the scene and used to fall asleep under the shield until I was woken up by applause.		402
You got paid on Friday, go for a late-night poker game, and have no money on Saturday. But the RSC took your rent out of the paycheck, so at least you had a place to sleep.		403
I like to do really good things. But 'good' - witness Charles Dickens - doesn't mean 'not popular.'		404
'Nicholas Nickleby' is 800 pages long. At one time, the theater production was 15 hours long. So it's an interesting process, about what you leave out and what you select.		405
You may be modest and un-egotistical in your life; I'm quite ordinary. But I play big egotistical parts.		406
It's a vain craft, acting.		407

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