Top 130 Backstage Quotes

The backstage play, in which the private lives of theater people are put onstage for the world to see, is one of the diciest of dramatic genres.

When I leave backstage, some of the fans ask if I’m a roadie, and I just tell them, ‘No, I’m the bus driver.’ And, of course, they believe it.

My earliest memories are at the Blue Note here in New York or backstage at different theatres or different clubs, dressing rooms.

I read ‘Backstage’ a lot when I first was unleashed into the world from drama school. And what was great about it was that if I was using it or not, it was just nice to know what was happening in my community.

My dad was a theater actor, so I would follow him backstage. And my mom was a casting director. The moment I heard the applause and realized it would get me out of school, I was hooked.

I was doing one of my first plays at the Royal Court, and Matt LeBlanc came to see the play. He came backstage afterwards, and I couldn’t speak. I kept trying to, but no words came out. I just kept thinking, ‘That’s Joey from ‘Friends.’ That’s actual Joey from ‘Friends!” It was so embarrassing!

The high point of my entire junior high school career was going backstage to meet George Harrison. I was simply awestruck.

On the PBS recording of ‘The Light in the Piazza’ backstage, you get to see me doing some sweet lunges down the hallway of the Vivian Beaumont.

Supergroupies don’t have to hang around hotel corridors. When you are one, as I have been, you get invited backstage.

I love that moment just before the curtain goes up, whether I’m sitting in the audience or standing backstage. It’s full of expectation. It’s a thrill that’s unequaled anywhere.

Total Divas’ is all about us women backstage and our personal lives.

Backstage, I do my own thing and have my own spots in the locker room, so environmentally, it’s not very different for me. But the backstage environments are vastly different, but that is mainly because of the personalities.

I was making stickers for guys’ bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn’t even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.

All the adults in my family were actors, so there wasn’t much else in terms of role models. I fell in love with that world, being backstage at the theatre.

At 14, 15 years old, I started reading ‘Backstage’ regularly. Eventually, I got enough courage to look at the auditions section.

Prayer is God’s backstage pass into a personal audience with Him.

I sat backstage and had a beer with Richard Chamberlain, Paul Newman, and Princess Grace.

I met Sade! I performed ‘Blue Lights’ at one of Drake’s shows in London, and I met her backstage. She told me her son is a big fan. That was a moment when I was like, ‘Wow.’

Fashion week is very tiring, so I take a little nap backstage before the hair and make-up madness starts.

All my ego wants is to be sitting by a lake in Italy. It doesn’t want to be backstage, warming up.

I fart. My backstage ritual is flatulence.

At one point in the mid-Eighties I shared a promoter with the Smiths. One night, we were sitting backstage when Morrissey burst in, utterly distraught, sobbing his heart out. Turns out someone had thrown a sausage at him on stage during ‘Meat Is Murder.’

Judy Garland’s father was gay. That seems to be the consensus. They left Minnesota and went to California because he got caught with some boy backstage.

I had the most expensive haircut you can get, and I was walking around with my hair in rollers backstage, and my hair still came out looking like I was shot out of a cannon and I had just gotten out of bed.

That’s what I think musicals will come to. No backstage stories, nothing of that sort.

I talk to people now, and they thought I was so confident. I was doing all this awesome stuff onstage, and they didn’t realize I was going through so much loneliness and hurt backstage. It was like high school.

Tagging with Cesaro, I’ve just had fun. I don’t think about promos; I don’t think about backstage scenes. I just go out there and be me.

We’re bringing a focus on wrestling. We’re bringing an emphasis on wrestling matches and action taking place in or around the ring. We’ll do great interviews too, but in these segments, we can do it all in the arena and around the ring. We can do some stuff backstage; we just don’t spend half the show backstage.

Woodstock – I didn’t see anybody play, except when I was standing backstage waiting to go on, because it was so muddy. And the weather was so horrible, you literally couldn’t get there except by helicopter.

I would say my most disappointing moment was not competing in a match even though I was Divas Champion at ‘WrestleMania XXVII.’ Although, I did get to be a part of a fun backstage segment with Stone Cold, the Rock, and Mae Young… not too shabby!

In TV, you get driven to work in a luxury car, and find flowers in your dressing room. Then suddenly you’re on tour, drying your hair backstage on plastic curtains.

I feel best in a ragged pair of red Honda Motorcycle pants. I have taken them to Machu Picchu, to the Knob Creek Machine Gun festival, and backstage to Cirque du Soleil – just the right touch to make you untouchable. No one quite dares to throw you out, because perhaps you are a world class motocross racer.

I remember going on stage for the very first time as a solo act, I was probably, like, nine or 10 years old. And being backstage, I started having anxiety… I was literally getting sick.

The movie that really ‘did it for me’ was ‘All About Eve.’ The backstage feeling, the authenticity, the passion those people had for their lives in the theater. I must say, the movie ‘All About Eve,’ what a great movie! ‘All About Eve’ had a profound effect on my life.

I graduated from Brown in 2001, moved to New York, and spent a year and a half just looking up ‘Backstage’ magazine auditions and grinding.

My parents were not at all backstage parents. We had none of that in the family. It was just very clear right away that I was an actor, even from 4 years old. I’ve never waited a table. I taught some – I’ll teach classes in improv or Shakespeare, but there’s some motor in me that needs to do that.

When the show opens, fans can text to a number we flash up on the screen, and then we do a meet-and-greet with 60 to 80 people every night. It’s something I love doing, and I would say that’s probably more fans than most artists bring backstage after a show.

Never stand still. Only stand still enough to learn, and once you stop learning in that stance, move off. Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get. If you can’t get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets. But be around actors because that is where you will primarily learn.

As a producer, it’s not unusual to find yourself on the field, backstage, often with a camera crew and living with constant anxiety of accidentally ending up in the shot.

AEW is all about the bell to bell action. You’re going to get more wrestling and less soapy backstage drama.

A play called ‘Bichchu’ with Om Puri in the main role was going to be staged and I was working backstage. An actor failed to turn up for rehearsals and the director asked me to do that role instead. I agreed and would go to the beach to rehearse my dialogues as I had no place to stay those days.

I see musicians like Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris as more than just musical icons: they are planets, with a gravitational pull – from how they flip their hair just-so when they bow, right down to their hearty backstage banter. It takes decades to learn the innuendos of being gracious and genuine all at once.

I was going out for absolutely everything that was in Backstage.

Sometimes with the WWE, you can get a little bit stale. Your traveling is usually with the same group, and you’re generally working with the same person and the same type of match, and it’s the same environment backstage.

‘Breaking In’ shows what it’s really like backstage at New York Fringe Theatre.

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.

My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends.

In America, celebrities who go to see your show will come backstage and introduce themselves. Meeting Annette Bening and Ethan Hawke that way was amazing, but when Tom Hanks came, it was really special – I’ve loved him since I first saw him in ‘Big!’

We need to diversify the people who are backstage and producing and marketing these shows. It’s the limitations of these people that are holding Broadway back.

I remember going backstage on a random night and Kanye goes, ‘Ayo Premier, I’m about to drop an album called ‘College Dropout’ and I’m rapping on the whole thing. And as I soon it drop it’s gonna go double platinum.’ I looked at him like, ‘That’s a bold statement to make if you never rapped before.’