My first band was called Nubert Circus, a very embarrassing, dumb name. It means nothing. We were kind of grunge. I would say we were more funny punk, a lot of songs about food and stuff like that.
The circus is a global theme. It exists in all parts of the world – maybe not in Africa, but it exists in Asia in all parts. In Latin America, it’s difficult to find a person who hasn’t gone to the circus.
I started acting in second grade – my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom’s encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw ‘The Sound of Music’ at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.
I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears’ 27th birthday and for the ‘Circus’ album she put out – the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.
I welcome newcomers to cons, or ‘con-virgins’ as I like to call them, by saying ‘Welcome to the ‘Supernatural’ Circus,’ and I mean it. We take pride as a cast to deliver a show that not only entertains the fans but ourselves, Creation Entertainment, and everyone involved on both sides.
Rock ‘n’ roll is like a circus today.
Circus lions are mean. They don’t know anything about affection training.
I enjoy being a hyphenate. I’ve always thought of my career as a plate spinner in the circus.
Cyclists are insane. You’re going through the Alps, climbing up mountains. There’s this circus around them. They’re so tough. When they have a day off, they go out and cycle 100 miles.
From 1840 to 1940, the circus was the biggest form of entertainment in the country. People were starting to have money, starting to have half a Saturday off. In an era before people went on vacations much, the big deal was when the circus came through town.
Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.
Animals are the traditional circus. It’s what people remember from their childhood.
When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing.
After touring an album, you have this strange void that follows it, where you feel slightly displaced, like you’ve just finished with the circus and you’ve got to find a new job. You think, OK, what shall we do next.
I’ve worked behind counters serving food, and I’ve lived on the circus train, and I’ve led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I’ve been a key liner for a newspaper, I’ve done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things.
I love Oxford Circus, so I can do Primarni, and I can do River Island and Topshop and Selfridges.
Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
In 1969, when I was still living in London, I had gone with some friends to see ‘Easy Rider’ in a movie theater in Piccadilly Circus and had returned alone some days later to see it again. It was Jack’s combination of ease and exuberance that had captured me from the moment he had come on-screen.
I’ve said it from the very beginning: Fighting the best guys in the world doesn’t pay as good as the circus. I want to join the circus. I’m trying to get that circus money.
You ask people, ‘What is the circus?’ They’ll say, ‘Animals, clowns and acrobats!’ That’s what people want. If you say you don’t have animals, they walk away.
One can do a film and not work for six months, but on TV, you have to produce good content every week. It involves a lot of hard work, as one has to fight for ratings every week. But I have always got love from the audiences, be it during ‘The Great Laughter Challenge’ or ‘Comedy Circus.’
There are always those ‘Gossip Girl’ walk-and-talk scenes where you’re walking and just talking about life and death. You’re having a serious conversation, looking someone in the eye, but everywhere around you, it’s literally a circus.
Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I’ve become a juggler, I suppose. It’s all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.
I don’t think the media circus has ever been a shock to my life seeing as I was with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor when I was 17.
I can be going through nothing, but within me, in my head, oh my God! It can be a circus.
Sometimes I think God wants there to be a circus so we can show there’s another way to respond.
When I wasn’t wrestling, I was always at the circus or at a show watching all these people – ‘how do they make their stuff work for their audience?’ That used to fascinate me as a child.
I’m shocked to be saying this, but as a child, I never went to a circus. It cost too much.
In the 20th century alone, there have been 1,600 books about the circus. My adding one more would be superfluous unless I do something totally new and different.
Circus with animal shows should be forbidden, there are enough other thrilling options.
When you do a ‘messa di voce,’ that means you start soft, you crescendo into loud – and then you go back to soft again. Some people call it circus tricks, but in bel canto, it’s really written into the music.
I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one.
We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I didn’t have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.
There was a TV special every year called ‘Circus of the Stars,’ and I did three consecutive ones – one as a juggler, one as a high-wire performer, and one as a high hand balance.
Learning to read, for the brain, is a lot like an amateur ringmaster first learning how to organise a three-ring circus. He wants to begin individually and then synchronise all the performances. It only happens after all the separate acts are learned and practised long and well.
Trump’s 2016 effort could afford to be a shambolic circus; nothing was on the line. He never expected to win and so the rotating cast of campaign managers didn’t really matter.
As a kid, the theatre always felt a bit like running away to join the circus.
Improv Olympics, Second City are some of the most tolerant, accepting people. They’re like circus folk. They’re freaks themselves.
I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.
I’ve been a tough sailor, a foppish-type landscape gardener, a French villain, a circus strongman.
