Actors Who Don't Do Stage Work

David Jason did a pantomime at least once.

Christian Bale hasn't been on stage since he was a child actor, I think.

That seems very unfair - apart from anything else, there are lifestyles / families to consider. I lived with theatre actors for several years - they were all single / divorced though at an age when their contemporaries had kids, certainly didn't have the income to buy their own flats, let alone start a family, and the nature of their work meant they were often away for several week stretches - it reminded me of a sailor lifestyle (I'm from a port city).

There are theatres in LA, you know.

Well, why not start a new thread to discuss those topics?

Christopher Lee was nearly 6'5" - I wonder if that might have made him hard to cast / costume? He'd have made the rest of the cast and the set look tiny! My brother once worked on a photoshoot with him (for LOTR, I think) and I'm so jealous!

I saw that production. Edgar and Edmund were played by young Bill Nighy and Douglas Hodge. App it was this production which more or less put paid to his stage career.

Really? I didn't know that. It didn't strike me as being awful.

I think stage and screen are 2 very different artforms and actors rarely come across great in both. The one artform does not fit the other.
For example Judi Dench. Great stage actress. Horrible on film. I have yet to hear her speak 1 line on screen that is believable. Her style only fits the stage.
It is too affected and big for the reality needed on screen.

And some to neither.

Yes, I was thinking of him - fantastic on stage but his style doesn't really work on screen. I think Derek Jacobi's looks meant he hasn't really got many lead roles on screen (I, Claudius was an unusual leading role - like Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, I suppose). Ian McDiarmid is another - rarely does TV / film, but when he does he's excellent.

I do hear British actors saying kids' schooling etc. is the reason they're staying there, though. I'd been discussing with a friend recently why London theatre seemed to be so good at the moment, with great casts - we thought maybe location filming, especially as a lot of stuff is filmed in Eastern Europe or even further afield (e.g. South Africa) or all the acting to green screen for CGI is putting the more established actors off. A lot of location stuff has noticeably young / relatively unknown casts, and I wondered to what extent that was because they were considered more attractive (I loved Richard Coles' comment that Poldark is 'Hollyoaks by candlelight'), or is it because it's harder to get more established actors for long spells on location? The better/established actors in Game of Thrones tend to be in short scenes and then get killed off. The Living and the Dead (BBC) had cast young-ish actors in lead roles, but I heard an interview with the programme makers where they said they'd originally envisioned them as older - plotwise it would have been better - and I think getting older actors was an issue, whilst Alan Cumming has said he's turned down Doctor Who because it meant living in Cardiff for a while!