Acting live on stage can give any actor or actress who is used to the cameras a new perspective and thrill as they instantly get to see their audience’s reaction to their take on a character. It’s a huge buzz and might even require more confidence than film acting because you’ve got to get up there in front of hundreds and give the performance of a life time, so the pressure is on to succeed. Some say that live acting on stage makes them truly transform into their character because they can forget everything else in the moment and really live it, while others get a huge thrill from being in front of so many people as they show off their acting skills.
Calista Flockhart
Calista feels as though she’s lived through her characters and thinks nothing compares: “You put on your own make-up and wig, and make yourself into someone else. There is nothing like a live audience. There is also the thing about taking the journey from start to finish in a live play, when anything can go wrong. That risk factor is exciting. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I remember doing Romeo and Juliet and after the play was over thinking, ‘I really feel as if I have lived that’. It was worth it to see the effect a play written 400 years ago had on the audience.”
Emma Stone
Emma first fell in love with acting on the stage because of the rush it gave her: “I think it was doing it for the first time, on stage in a school play when I was in first grade – I really felt so happy and alive and scared, and I think it was the adrenaline of it that initially got me hooked on acting – but then actually wanting to be a part of movies was because of how deeply movies affected me. And how much they made me feel like I had a voice that I couldn’t find myself.”
Julia Roberts
Julia puts everything into a performance and feels a huge buzz when she’s on stage:”It’s like childbirth, you don’t know until you’ve done it but you get a little bit away from it and you go, ‘Of course I want to do that again’. You get sucked back into doing theatre because it’s really thrilling and does challenge you as an actor in really unique ways. You know, I love the medium of film, I love that environment but it’s just different.”
Kate Bosworth
Kate finds the idea of live acting so exciting that she’s still working up the courage to do it: “I would love to do some (theatre), either in the West End or on Broadway, but I am trying to get up the courage first by trying to see as many plays as I can. I think I am some way off going on stage. I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me.”
Robert Pattinson
Robert loves to feel the audience willing him to succeed on the stage: “From the little amount of theatre I’ve done, I know that usually you can feel a push from the audience, who have come along wanting the show to succeed. But when I go to premieres, it’s more like the crowd is pulling, really wanting something from you. I always feel completely drained afterwards. It would be very strange and exhausting to have that kind of experience every night on stage.”
