Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A character I would love to play is Iago, from Othello.
I saw 'Othello' with Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones.
When I first played Othello, a reviewer absolutely slaughtered me.
When I was in high school, the drama teacher picked me to play Iago in 'Othello.'
I played Othello at RADA - blacked up. I didn't know it was going to be offensive now!
I saw 'Othello' at the National Theatre in London, and it was so stunning. I was so moved. It's beautiful.
I've played almost every lead character from Henry VI to Othello. I'm dying to tackle Richard III sometime.
I look forward to the day when indigenous actors can play Hamlet and Ophelia and not just Othello and Desdemona.
I've done 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' I've understudied Iago in 'Othello.' I've done Mercutio in 'Romeo and Juliet.'
Shakespeare's 'Othello' was inspired by Cinthio's 'A Moorish Captain'; his 'Hamlet' came from Saxo Grammaticus's 'Amleth.'
I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III.
I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.
Othello is someone who's just had a victory, and it's the aftermath of coming back and attempting to live comfortably as a civilian.
I did 'Othello' at the Oregon Shakes - I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two and a half years. That's where my training is.
'Othello' is the most domestic of Shakespeare's tragedies and the one that's likely to strike a personal note with a lot of people watching it.
All the characters in 'Rang Rasiya' are inspired from the Shakespearean drama 'Othello.' This is exactly what interested me to take up this role.
As an actor, whether I'm playing Othello on stage or David Estes on 'Homeland,' that ability to give into your imagination is something that I enjoy.
When I think of Othello, I think of a poet-warrior. Let me say that again - a romantic warrior. And I think I have those qualities in common with him.
I'd like to do more Shakespeare. I'd like to do Iago in Othello. I look so benign. It would be interesting to see that black evil come out of my soul.
Both Othello and Iago seem a bit cracked. If you spend 15 years being responsible for death and destruction, that sense of suppressed horror is strong.
I started with me as Awkwafina reciting 'Othello' monologues, and I'd send those to my friends. It started like that, and then it went into more music-y stuff.
Throughout my career, even as a very young actor, people have always said to me that they would like to see my Othello. They could see something of him in me, I suppose.
There's posh character actors. For God's sake, Olivier was one of the greatest character actors in the world. Hamlet, Shylock, Othello - Othello! Whether you like it or not.
My father used to act in high school. He was in a production of 'Othello;' I don't know who he played, but it wasn't Othello. He would talk about it, though, and read Shakespeare to me.
After 'Othello,' it was, like, 'I can stop acting. I have played one of the great characters in the English language. I feel I have played him well and honorably. I have nothing to prove anymore.'
I'd read Shakespeare in school, translated into isiXhosa, and loved the stories, but I hadn't realised before I started reading the English text how powerful the language was - the great surging speeches Othello has.
Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.
'Othello' was my first Shakespearean discovery. I was obsessed with drama at school, and I studied the play for my English GCSE. Desdemona is the part that everyone wants, but Iago's wife Emilia is the one I've always been drawn to.
I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.
Oh, there's so much ego with men; in their head, they can't possibly think about Tesco's when they are doing Othello. Er, why not? They want to think that they are such geniuses they can't muddy their day with domesticity, and I've got no truck with it whatsoever.
I'm quite sure Shakespeare enjoyed writing Iago much more than he did writing Othello. If you write about someone you love, what the hell are you supposed to say about that person? It's much better to have something between you and your main character that grates.
I don't think Othello is a jealous man - he is a man who has been deceived by another person, just as everybody in the play is deceived by that person... The playwright uses the word 'jealousy' over and over and over again, but I don't think it has anything to do with being jealous.
You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.
What does Macbeth want? What does Shakespeare want? What does Othello want? What does James want? What does Arthur Miller want when he wrote? Those things you incorporate and create in the character, and then you step back and you create it. It always must begin with the point of truth within yourself.
Young screenwriters are always very frustrated when they talk to me. They say, 'How do we get to be a screenwriter?' I say, 'You know what you do? I'll tell you the secret, it's easy: Read 'Hamlet.' You know? Then read it again, and read it again, and read it until you understand it. Read 'King Lear,' and then read 'Othello.'
I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National, and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw, but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.
There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.