Laurence Olivier Award Winners

"I have been fortunate to play some fantastic roles in musicals and I find it difficult to say which is my favourite. It's generally whichever I am playing at the time. However playing Eva Peron in Evita will always be particularly special to me. Being chosen to originate the role in the premiere of a much sought after and what became a ground-breaking, award-winning musical which launched my career was a great challenge and it gave me the opportunity to play more great roles in the future."

"My first singing role was as Susanna in a school production in a shortened form of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. I loved to sing and I was given lots of encouragement by a wonderful music teacher Mrs Ann Hill and by my parents who suggested I go to drama school."

"I couldn't tell anyone about it. I didn't want anyone to know. It's only now that I've survived, I'm able to speak about it. As far as I know I'm clear and completely well - but it never leaves you completely. It's made me learn a lot about myself. When you're on your own, you've just got to get on with it, grit your teeth and think, 'Right, I'm going to beat this.' I did have my dear friend and, without him, I don't know what I would have done."

"I never for a moment considered not doing the show. When I did the show I became very emotional. Some of the lyrics suddenly took on an entirely different meaning. Words like, 'as if we never said goodbye' became more real."

"It did something to me. I thought it was the most glorious melody."

"It was the most terrible feeling. I'd had enough and I'd felt I'd lost something so very important to me. I thought it had died and gone away. And I was frightened it might not come back. I just didn't seem to be able to shake off this feeling of doom and gloom. I had to come home. But to what? I was tired. I missed New York and the show and the people. It was like a grieving process."

"Although no one could question her zealous work ethic (she drove herself to breakdown performing in Pam Gems’s Piaf in 1993), Paige is not exactly known for her humility. In newspaper profiles, that dread word "difficult" is often applied, and yet here she is in the chorus line, cheerfully taking on a modest role in a musical with far more credibility and less bombast than the shows that made her name."

"Three years ago, around Christmas, when she was starring in The King and I in London, Mum was diagnosed with cancer. Elaine thought she should come out of the show, but Mum wanted her to finish her contract. That was very hard for Elaine, having to go on stage night after night knowing she wanted to be with Mum."

"I used to get nervous for Elaine before a show, but not any more. She likes to be really well prepared for a role; she's very hard on herself. I'd never want to put myself through that kind of stress."

"She is confident when she talks about singing and stagecraft, surprisingly diffident when it comes to anything outside her field."

"I never expected to like her at all - she has quite a reputation for being difficult and once told a male interviewer that she would no longer give interviews to female journalists because 'I don't trust other women in these situations. They establish a sisterhood with you and then betray it every time.' But actually I found her chatty, friendly, good humoured."

"My family wasn't troubled by much dysfunction. The most hotly contested issue was probably 'Who is going to have the most peas?'. Consequently, I haven't got much time for angst. Anything that happens to you is your own responsibility."

"For me real peace is lying on a river bank in summer with a sprig of grass in my mouth. I have friends who jet off to a luxury hotel. I think, 'How can you enjoy such ghastly luxury?'"

"We need a corrective on who is a genuine artist. I'm an opportunist. I have no talent. That's true of 99 per cent of people in the British media. Ricky Gervais or Graham and Arthur who wrote Father Ted or Armando Iannucci are God-like as they have talent. Everyone else is a drone."

"Mel and I genuinely get on. It's like another marriage. He is very straightforward and never loses his rag. I run around in a frenzy most of the time. London cabbies will say to me, 'Your mate Mel's a miserable bastard', but he's far more grounded than me."

"Now, Piers Morgan is a bit of a ****."

"I've always hated the way I looked, and I've never complained about my brains."

"That's not girth. That's a para-umbilical hernia."

"I hate being the subject of photographs."

"I believe in being with someone for ever. Even though my marriage to Chris didn't work, I still don't consider it a failed marriage — it just came to its natural end. It didn't make me feel like I never wanted to get married again. I like sharing things with somebody."

"I don't think anyone understands anyone's job … We all have the same hang-ups. I get jealous if I know Laurence is kissing someone else."

"I think it must be hard being David. I get a certain level of attention but — I've seen it in action — he can't move for attention."

"I think people have common sense and can tell what's real, what's right or what's wrong and work it out."

"I was freakishly ambitious. I didn't want to be a child. I wanted my own flat, to work and be a grown up."

"People were dealing with CGI for the first time, so I think we were really unsure as to whether it would be a huge success or a big flop. … I thought the scripts were so good. It had a kind of domestic element which I'm not sure it ever had before. I think we were feeling quite confident about that. … In terms of whether it had a place in the world when it aired, I think everyone was quite unsure. I didn't know until it aired and people really seemed to like it."

"I just feel really content at the moment … I've done quite a lot of stuff and I don't have to feel desperate to do anything that radical or wild. I've set myself all these challenges and worked through them. I just feel I'm ready to be a mum now."

"Yes, I've been compared to Jackie Gleason often. I've been often compared to Lou Costello. … But after a while you start to go, 'Well, geez. Do I have a personality in there?' The funny thing about Gleason is, he always used to talk about watching Jack Oakie. And if you ever watch Jack Oakie in an old movie, it's very similar to Gleason. … I think we all steal from one another."

"The more competition, the better. I hope to get snubbed again this year."

"I'll always go back to the stage."

"I was at a dinner party at Steve Martin's house not too long ago. Some very funny people were there - Steve, Marty Short, the whole gang. We sat around the table, like eight of us, and we laughed so hard that we were just sitting there laughing and crying. And I thought, 'This is great. This is what it's like when life is really good. Sitting around with people of that quality and that caliber, people being funny. Smart and funny.' It's great."

"My oldest brother used to take me to the theater. The first play he took me to see was 'Black Comedy,' then he took me to see 'Butley.' We'd see all these British plays. And 'Hello, Dolly,' with Pearl Bailey. I was unconsciously thinking, 'Gee, I would love to be able to do that.'"

"A sitcom is the closest thing for me to doing stage because you work in front of an audience, and if it's well written it can be very satisfying."

"I guess there's some sort of unspoken show business rule, [speaks in British accent] 'You do the theater, and then you move into television, and then, of course, that is your steppingstone to film stardom.' I've done it every which way. I've done theater for many, many years and then had some success in films. I would do television sporadically. I thought this was a good time to try it."

"When Nathan read aloud one of his lines, 'I'm a lying, despicable crook, but I have no choice. I am a Broadway producer,' they all howled. And then they started to throw money at the project. They all wanted to produce the show."

"There's a freedom there and an understanding of my career and the things I've done. I'm seen here as primarily a comic actor, which is OK, but I can go to New York and I do something that's very emotional. It would be lovely at some point to do something like that on film."

"I had to develop a sense of humor I'm sure it's a defense mechanism. It was, 'Before they make fun of me, I'll make a joke.' Being funny is just a point of view about life in general. Sometimes it's born out of difficult childhoods, where you have to develop a sense of humor. Ultimately, it's a gift."

"I think of myself as an actor and not a movie star. I like doing movies; I enjoy it. But, essentially, I'm a theater actor. That's the only place I feel like I actually am a star. In the theater, I can put people in the seats and sell tickets."

"I can remember seeing the movie for the first time at a revival house in L.A. and laughing with everyone else, and never imagining that I would be doing Max one day, even though by then I had already memorized the entire movie."

"I've seen most of Nathan's work, but it was seeing both 'Lisbon Traviata' and 'Laughter on the 23rd Floor' that I realized just what a superb physical comic he was."

"He is a theater animal who is ignited by his synergy with an audience. Audiences are only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of what Nathan can do."

"But in order for anyone to become successful, sometimes you have to be that driven and focused, and maybe there isn't a lot left over for personal relationships—although I certainly have had them. It's not as if I cut myself off, but it makes them very difficult. This profession is very hard on relationships."

"I think it really is all about technique, but it's where the intersection of acting and singing sort of meets. There has to be a musicality to the delivery of a line of dialogue that gives it impact. Somebody like Nathan Lane understands that. It's in his bones really. He can deliver a line five different ways, and each one has incredible impact and intonation and rhythm."

"There isn't anyone else like Nathan. He is able to express more in a look or a word than most actors I've ever worked with."

"My dad was great. He was very droll, very dry. The first time that he came to London when I was in the theatre and my name was in lights for the very first time and we had the same name, and he passed the theatre with me on the way, he was going to see a matinee and me, and my mother and he passed the theatre, and I said, 'Look,' and he looked up at my name in lights, and stood there for five minutes, and I'm going, 'I want to have lunch and get back for the matinee,' and I'm with my mother, and he still stood there and so, I went back to get him and he just said, 'I never thought that I'd see my name in lights.'"

"It seems to me a long way to go just to sit in a non-drinking, non-smoking environment on the offchance your name is called. … It's as if you are entered into a race you don't particularly want to run in. All the hoops you have to jump through on these occasions: it's not my favourite occupation. Walking around in the spotlight having to be me is not something I'm particularly comfortable with or desire. I'd sooner pretend to be someone else."

"I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth."

"It's true that old actors don't die, their parts get smaller. You're less likely to get the part, many parts, if you're playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around."

"To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life."

"Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' We're given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there's a group of people all ready to make a film and it's a marvelous life."