Patricia Heaton

For 70 episodes, Heaton played Debra Barone, Ray Romano¡¯s wife on the very popular sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. As a young woman, she focused on theatre arts at Ohio State University and then went to New York where she studied with William Esper. She made her debut in the Broadway gospel musical Don¡¯t Get God Started, but overall during her career in New York she was relegated to small roles. With a few acting buddies, she started a theatre company called Stage Three, which produced new works in NYC. In 1989 they took their successful production of The Johnstown Vindicator to Los Angeles, where casting directors saw and liked Heaton. Slowly her TV career started to take off. But Heaton has long acknowledged that despite the fact that she never made it big on Broadway, her stage training has been instrumental to her success on television.

James Gandolfini

Gandolfini continues his run as the cold-hearted, insecure, narcissistic Tony Soprano on HBO¡¯s hit series The Sopranos. After receiving a degree in Communications from Rutgers University, Gandolfini went on to study acting in the late 1980¡¯s at the prestigious Actors Studio in New York City. After making his professional stage debut in Big El's Best Friend, he appeared in many New York productions. He made his Broadway debut in 1992 as Steve Hubbell in the revival of Tennessee Williams¡¯ A Streetcar Named Desire, which starred Alex Baldwin and Jessica Lang. Other New York credits included On the Waterfront, One Day Wonder and Tarantulas Dancing. The same year he first appeared on Broadway, he also landed his first screen role, which was in Sidney Lumet's A Stranger Among Us. Since 1992, he¡¯s appeared in over 20 films. He¡¯s been Tony Soprano in over 70 episodes.

Other actors, who have either made their name or learned invaluable acting lessons in the theatre before becoming part of the electronic entertainment industry, include Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, Meryl Streep, and Swoosie Kurtz. These actors have labored hard to learn their craft on what was the first acting platform available to humankind - the live stage.

Movies are a little over 100 years old and television is about 75 years old. The formal theatre goes back over 2,500 years! It¡¯s the true learning and testing ground for acting technique, stamina, and skill that, once honed, can then be transferred to any other venue.

Go to a Broadway show or a professional theatre near you - you may catch a performance by someone you¡¯ll see break through on the tube in the next few years. One night, you¡¯ll be sitting in your den or living room watching the next big hit drama or sitcom and say, "Hey, didn¡¯t we see that actor on the stage?" Yeah, you did, before they were famous. Very cool.

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