I grew up being that kid backstage doing my math homework and my father made sure I knew from everybody in the cast to the lighting people and to respect everyone in the theater and all the way down to the janitor. It’s a part of my childhood. It’s what I know really.
I would think: Stay close to the implants! They must know something because they keep getting asked backstage!
My parents are actors as well, so I grew up around that world. It was always a very romantic, mythical world. They did a lot of theater, so to me an actor was getting to come backstage and dressing room mirrors with bulbs around them and trying on people’s costumes. It was very exciting to me as a child.
I’ve gotten to go to the Opry a couple of times and stand backstage and watch. But I made it a point not to take a tour or stand in the circle until music took me there. I told myself that was one place I’d never go unless music took me there.
It’s quite rare that you find models taken care of backstage.
You see, I am friends with a lobsterman. Because we are friends, which feels lucky anyway, I get access to the most amazing fish. It’s like having a backstage pass – a culinary jackpot that feels almost undeserved.
Occasionally, when I run into a great bass backstage at a festival I’ll play a few notes on the low E string, just to feel the instrument vibrate against my belly.
I believe in not whistling backstage and not saying the name of the Scottish play.
It’s easy to be lazy when there’s food lying around backstage or there’s a fast-food joint a couple blocks away. But if you walk a little further, ask around a bit, of course there are exciting things to discover.
Television is hard work. It’s all hard work. Theatre is hard work. I tell you, I have bruises from changing backstage. Those quick changes are really difficult.
Sometimes I might be sleepy, and sometimes I’ve literally been sleeping backstage, woken up, gone straight on stage or gone crazy. It’s not like I psyche myself; I don’t do any of that.
I didn’t know who Langston Hughes was till he met me backstage.
When I’ve been on shows as a guest, I’m backstage, so I don’t usually hear what the warm-up is saying, so I went and watched a couple of people do it and thought, ‘Actually, I reckon this is do-able.’ The audience is usually excited to be there; it’s just getting a good chat with people.
As an artist, you’re pretty sheltered backstage. You often don’t know what’s going on out there.
My junior year, I was in a play at school and five days before opening night, I still didn’t know my lines. Opening night was a disaster. I was so embarrassed. The director made me work backstage for the rest of the performance.
I find that I get nervous before I play. Even sound checks can give me anxiety and screw with my mind. But as long as I can play a little acoustic guitar backstage if I’m feeling nervous, so I don’t have to walk in there cold turkey, I’ll be fine.
When I first started modeling, I had the chance to walk the runway with Naomi passing by me, but I didn’t know anything about supermodels. But when I saw her backstage, she complimented me on my walk, and I thought she was so nice – everyone was freaking out that I didn’t know who she was.
Growing up, as much as country was a big influence in my life, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and Led Zeppelin were such a close second. My first concert ever was the Rolling Stones in Denver. I snuck a camera backstage and filmed Mick Jagger during sound-check.
I was a little nervous backstage. But I had this book, Gandhi. I just read his quotes, closed my eyes and focused my thoughts. Presently, this book is my prized possession.
I’m a bad liar; I don’t know what to say backstage.
Backstage at the Apollo isn’t a fun place to be. It’s a bit like a prison: small rooms filled with warm Diet Coke.
I certainly know that on our first tour of America in 1968, David Crosby came to see us backstage at the Fillmore East in New York, and I was very pleased to meet him from Buffalo Springfield and that kind of stuff. He didn’t ask me anything about the music, but he said, ‘Where’d you get your clothes, man?’
As far as backstage, the morale has always been good. It’s very relaxed backstage. No one’s walking on eggshells and there’s no one stabbing another in the back. It’s always been really good.
When you left this one theater in Norfolk, the actors had to walk through the lobby to get out to the street. People would see you and say nice things, tell you that you were good. So, pretty soon I’m pretending to forget things backstage, going through the lobby a couple of times.
Whether it’s standing backstage with Jennifer Lopez in a dress that I know everyone will be talking about tomorrow… or being there when incredible news breaks, and instead where people sit in front of their TVs and look at it, I’m the person who goes there to bring you the story… It’s amazing. It’s unbelievable.
You must keep people happy backstage because that affects what’s onstage. During a run, the playwright feels like the mayor of a small town filled with noble creatures who have to get out there and make it brand new every night. When a production works, it’s unlike any other joy in the world.
At any Maroon 5 concert, you’ll see a room backstage marked ‘yoga.’
My memories of Las Vegas were all with my father when I was, like, a teenager. He was best friends with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and we’d come up and see the shows and go backstage afterwards and have dinner together. It was one of my first educations about stars and how they really are back stage.
I grew up backstage and on movie sets, and I thought they were the most magical places on Earth.
I met Bowie when I was 15 backstage at his ‘Reality’ tour and blacked out completely. I have no memory of the encounter except just looking into his different-colored eyes.
You get into any club you want, you have backstage passes for any concert you can think of, anywhere. You have access to everything, in the same way a toddler does. Everybody’s like, ‘Oh come on in!’
If I wasn’t addicted to the idea of performing, I think retiring out of the ring and moving to a backstage position or becoming more of an office guy. That wouldn’t bother me so much.
Backstage life is terrific training for an actor, seeing shows from the wings.
I just work a lot. I just remember recording in a hotel room in Malaysia. I work on planes, I work on buses. A lot of times when I’m backstage in the hotel or on the bus, I would have new ideas.
Every show is a mess at its first preview. No one’s had enough time to rehearse in costumes, traffic patterns backstage haven’t been worked out, machinery weighing thousands of pounds is being operated for the first time. And, also, it’s the first time all the material you’ve written is before the public.
I believe in ‘Backstage.’ It changed my life.
I saw a lot of operas from backstage and watched a lot of rehearsals – my parents were singers.
When I was 10 years old, there was a competition on the CBBC page on Teletext to be on a game show called ‘Insides Out,’ and the winner would get a backstage pass to the BBC. And I won!
I want to go to Harry Potter Land! I actually should text Emma Watson to see if she can hook us up with a backstage pass or something. That’s the perk of doing a movie with Emma called ‘The Perks Of Being A Wallflower.’
Theater was definitely part of my roots. My father would take me to plays, and then my mother was always on the lookout for other talent and taking me to see plays. I saw Frank Langella in ‘Dracula’… Great, great performances. I was a theater rat, hanging out backstage.
I love doing the in-ring promos more than doing the backstage promos because I love being able to interact with the crowd.
And I’d watch George C. Scott from backstage. He was one of my mentors.
My dad would take me downtown, and I’d stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.
When I was a teenager, I continued to visit imaginary places by spending all my free time at our local community theater. Whether I acted in a play or worked backstage, the world of Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare always seemed more real to me than the dreary life of high school.
The backstage stuff is not for everybody. I’m very hands on; I like to train and teach young guys now because there’s so many of them. There are certain ways to do things, to get crowd reactions and sell your emotions and sell stories.
I remember working with Agyness Deyn. At the time, she was the only one who had short hair as a model. I remember being so envious of her because we would all be getting our hair pulled for two hours backstage, and she was getting a new haircut almost every other show.
From a backstage perspective, one of the things I always tried to do in wrestling was maintain that I was Adam. Edge was a character.
I was a bit of a backstage baby, but I wasn’t at all precocious, and there was never a light bulb moment when I decided to go on the stage.
I don’t often wear mascara in real life, but on-set or backstage, if I’m crying or even if my eyes get watery, I get a Q-Tip, and I wet it with a few drops of water. Then I go lash by lash and clean it up.
My family was amazing; they exposed me to the world of show business, and, boy, it was the ’70s and I got to spend a lot of time backstage at theaters and see the inner workings of how this entertainment industry is really put together.
