Doing Shakespeare in the Park has always been a dream. Everyone else says Hamlet, but I want to play Romeo.
Aaron Yoo
Perhaps because my background is theatrical, I have a great affinity with the classics. Hamlet has always been a character of great interest to me and a character I would really love to play. Or a character in a Tennessee Williams play, maybe Tom in 'The Glass Menagerie.'
Adhir Kalyan
I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet.' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it.
Alan Cumming
Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.
I've seen 'Hamlet' many times, and Hamlet, he was just a hideous neurotic; he never changes. He doubts - all the way to the end, all the way until when he dies, he doubts.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense, philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense.
Andrew Coyle Bradley
When I see a friend play Hamlet or see an inspirational performance, I absolutely get excited by the idea of changing things up.
Andrew Lincoln
I wanted to cut past the polemics and experience London's Muslim communities for myself. My first visit was to Tower Hamlets, an East London borough that is about 38% Muslim, among the highest in the U.K. As I walked down Whitechapel Road, the adhan, or call to prayer, echoed through the neighborhood.
Andy Ngo
Five billion people have played Hamlet. 'To be or not to be.' And how do you do that and find your way into your own journey, your own way of telling it?
Annette Bening
I have no problems with remakes, and I think it's interesting. I mean, coming from the theater, we've been remaking 'Hamlet' for a hundred years, so it's no problem to me at all. A good story can be told in many different ways in different places; I just think it's interesting.
Baltasar Kormakur
Richard III is not likeable. Macbeth is not likeable. Hamlet is not likeable. And yet you can't take your eyes off them. I'm far more interested in that than I am in any sort of likeability.
Beau Willimon
Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.
Ben Kingsley
There's a huge raft of roles that actors in our culture perform, and you can see any one of about three Hamlets in a year. It's not something to be completely daunted by.
Benedict Cumberbatch
What if Shakespeare had had a test audience for Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?
Brendan Fraser
I've always wanted to give 'Hamlet' a shot. It's the big one, you know. I haven't done Shakespeare professionally, so I think it would be terrifying.
Brian d'Arcy James
I've played Hamlet and Coriolanus, Orlando in 'As You like It' and Ariel in 'Tempest,' among others.
Christian Camargo
'Hamlet' was the first movie I saw. In 1948, my mother said, 'I'm going to take you to see 'Hamlet' with Laurence Olivier.' She was worried about taking me to it because she wasn't sure I was old enough to understand it or to maybe be adversely affected by it, but I got recordings of it and memorized all the soliloquies.
Christopher Lloyd
Hamlet is the result of Shakespeare's work on Brutus.
Dakin Matthews
Yes, it's annoying that Hamlet doesn't kill his stepfather ten minutes into the play, but if he did kill his stepfather ten minutes into the play, there wouldn't be a play. He has to be annoying, if you will, and not do what would be the thing to do.
Dallas Roberts
I've done classical theaters. I played Hamlet myself and Romeo.
Damian Lewis
I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain.
I'm just an entertainer. All I want to be is funny. I never aspired to play Hamlet.
'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great.
'Hamlet' is the most famous play in the world for a reason. The journey you go on is incredible.
Usually, you see this play as a guy who can't make up his mind, but our version is more of a revenge thriller than a man who is pontificating what he should do next. I've never seen a 'Hamlet' this big, this exciting, with this many cast members; it's quite a spectacle.
'Hamlet' is so modern; 'Coriolanus' is utterly alien to our consciousness, and that makes it difficult for us.
'Hamlet' is a play of many strange parts, with ghosts and players, politicians and clowns.
I grew up doing regional Shakespeare, and when Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, there's something about that that you don't really do in film anymore.
One of the most beautiful things about Shakespeare's Hamlet is when he stops in the middle of the play to ask, 'To be or not to be?' Then, right at the end, he decides to 'let be.' The first season of 'Stranger Things' was Hopper asking whether 'to be or not to be' and the second is to 'let be.'
Few areas which are not publicly owned can boast as many footpaths as the Cuckmere Valley. For a short walk, a footbridge across the river leads back to the little hamlet of Milton Street, where another classic local pub, the Sussex Ox, provides an admirable lunch.
Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.
I'm as happy doing 'Postman Pat' as I am doing 'Hamlet.'
I'm often given parts that aren't as big as they are colorful, but people remember them. When it's a minor or supporting role, you learn to make the most of what you're given. I can make two lines seem like 'Hamlet'.
I got into this thing called the National Youth Theatre, and to me, that was all about the status quo. It seemed to me like 'Downton Abbey' - all the working-class and black people were playing servants, or the gravedigger in 'Hamlet,' and the boys from Eton and posh private schools got Hamlet, all the big roles.
You have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop.
If you're a classical actor, every Shakespearean part you play, you then say, 'McKellen did it this way,' and, 'Jacobi did it this way.' There's a whole list of Oliviers and people, whether you play Hamlet or Richard II or Richard III, any of those roles. And I found that a bit when I did 'La Cage.' It didn't bother me one bit.
The review I've been most offended by came when I played Hamlet. I'd always prided myself on being an 'invisible actor' and not getting in the way of the play. But this review didn't mention me once. That's worse than being insulted.
I come from a council estate in Tower Hamlets, and by no means am I the only person who has done well - one of my friends is head of year in a great school in Twickenham. Another is a writer; another is an artist, a musician.
You have to learn the language of Hamlet.
When I think of all the Hamlets I've seen, there's been a load of different styles, some marvellous. You like the Hamlet you saw when you were the right age to think you could be Hamlet.
Like, that was weird in 'Hamlet 2,' because I played myself there, fully myself, but then I realized, 'Oh, I'm not playing myself. I'm some weird version of myself.' So as an actress, you're always playing something, I don't even know who I am, how could I become me? I don't know what that is.
We want to do for 'Hamlet' what Baz Luhrmann did for 'Romeo and Juliet' in terms of like a really cool kind of re-imagining.
I started to realise that it wasn't for me. Perhaps I didn't have to give my Hamlet before I died, that the world might be an OK place without my Hamlet, in fact.
I got dared to audition for a play by my best friend Paul. He got cast in 'Hamlet,' and I got cast in 'Prelude to a Kiss,' and that changed everything.
I would love to play Henry IV, Henry V, and Hamlet.
I don't want to do 'Hamlet.' I don't want to do Robert Redford roles or Mel Gibson roles or Kevin Costner roles, because I'm not going to be good at them.
I was not the young heroic model for 'Hamlet.' I tended to play those characters that orbited around them: the rogues and the rat bags and the idiots and the fools and the clowns that sway the plot somehow from a tangent.
As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.
Anytime you create art, you create a mess. I mean, 'Hamlet' is a mess!
Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language.
