I played in Spain, and we also had a very good dressing room, and I won a lot of things. So I think that in my experience of being in dressing rooms, it’s so important to have a really good group.
You live in a bubble, generally, when you’re touring and recording – you’re in confined – in alone space, wherever you are, in the dressing room or in the studio – so sometimes it’s hard to grasp that bigger picture of things that are going on.
I am not a person who tries on in the stores. It drives me crazy. So I buy and take back if I don’t like something. I really don’t enjoy being in the dressing room. I rather just try it on in my house.
When I joined the ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ panel in 2009, the controller of the BBC came into my dressing room and said they were proud to have a woman of colour on their panel. It was so nice that they acknowledged it.
It was a great experience to share the dressing room with names like Virat Kohli, M S Dhoni, Rohit Sharma.
You’ve always got 20 per cent of a dressing room that won’t be happy with their manager because they want to play more often. There are players who will have been moaning all year about not being in the team, but when they got their chance they failed to take it.
Ronaldo is a bon vivant, he is friendly, he always has something to help you progress. He wants to be the best around. It infuriates him when he loses, he cannot stand it. It’s true that sometimes, in the dressing room, it’s fun to lose just to make him mad!
I keep 10-pound dumbbells in my dressing room. It’s nice to do before a show to get your muscles to wake up.
I have to watch my language. I think a lot about the words I use in both the public environment and the dressing room. The language you use is a direct insight into how you are feeling.
If you want a measure of how private a place the dressing room was when I was growing up at Manchester United, consider this: even Sir Alex Ferguson would knock before coming into the dressing room at the Cliff, the old training ground. The dressing room is for the players – and the players only.
Media were never allowed into an Australian dressing room until I became skipper. I changed that and invited them in at the close of play each day, thereby confirming for many administrators they had appointed a madman as captain.
I’m not the kind of person who goes into the dressing room and says: ‘I’m the Guv here.’ But maybe I give off the aura that I’m the kind of person who can be a big player.
I always find the mirror in the dressing room is where the best artists are.
I really enjoy everything about this profession. From the training I do preparing for my matches, to the time I spend in the dressing room getting ready, right up until I make my entrance to the ring and the final bell rings.
When I moved in, I said, ‘I don’t care how this makes me look or sound: I am converting one of these bedrooms into a shoe closet.’ It’s become more of a dressing room, but one wall is shoes in their perfect cubbies.
I did ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ a while ago, and Lady Gaga was in the dressing room next to mine. The outfit she wore walking down the hall was even more fabulous than what she wore onstage!
I’ll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries – one of the oddest I’ve ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly.
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.
In the dressing room, I always put on my right shoe first. Same thing for my right wristband.
The feeling of pleasure and enjoyment from what we do is extremely important. It creates trust and respect when you walk into the dressing room or onto the pitch.
I have a personal little routine that I do in my dressing room just to kind of get myself mentally prepared to go on stage, and part of that is a poem that I read to myself.
Undertaker was always a leader in the dressing room, always a man’s man. No one ever doubted what he said because his word was good. He was a guy that set the dressing room standard. If you had an issue or personal problem, you could go to Undertaker and he would help you.
I am who I am, and I try to influence the team in my own way, especially with my performances on the pitch. If possible, I try to help the team in the dressing room as well by offering encouragement where needed.
I’m not afraid of Wolfsburg and I know my dressing room is not.
As soon as I score, my mother texts me, so when I go in the dressing room, her text is there waiting for me to read!
When you lose, a lot of things that should stay in the dressing room get leaked.
You take that walk from the dressing room to the ring and that’s when the real man comes out. Then you climb up those four stairs and into the ring. Then finally, you can’t wait for the bell to ring.
More than half of the matches are won in the dressing room for him. The guy he’s playing against is sitting in the locker-room thinking ‘oh my God, I’m going to play Rafa Nadal on clay in five sets, that’s going to be painful.’
I do not like going to the dressing room and trying on millions of outfits. I just look at something and hope that it will work. I try it on at home, since I don’t like going through the whole process.
There was a note on my dressing room table that said, Call Neil Young.
I used to watch my mom put her makeup on for the stage, and it was one of the most special moments. I would sit quietly on the dressing room floor and watch her put her face on. I think she looks most beautiful in the morning when she wakes up with no makeup on… it’s my favorite look on women.
I have a drum set in my dressing room. I play drums to relax and have some fun.
Sunderland, West Ham and Orlando City wanted me but Villa wouldn’t sell me, saying I was too vital in the dressing room.
I haven’t had a chance to decorate my dressing room yet, but I have these pictures of myself as a kid that I want to put up because I said, ‘I really want to make sure that I take that kid with me on this journey.’ I want him to experience this.
I’ve been fortunate most of the seven promotions I’ve won have been with sides I built from zero, so it is doubly rewarding. There is nothing to match being in the dressing room celebrating promotion after a long season with a group of lads you have put together.
I have never been a bad influence in the dressing room.
Zidane is a leader in the dressing room. His personality is going to make him very successful.
I’m still that rowdy dude who has after-parties in his dressing room with a concert-sized PA system blasting away.
Kyriakos Papadopoulos is really funny. So is Karim Bellarabi. They are full of jokes in the dressing room.
The group of players that you see in the Barca dressing room is unique. There are a lot of homegrown players and others who really care for Barcelona a lot as well.
In every dressing room in the world, players say things to each other after a defeat, and then it gets forgotten.
I’m sure Jofra Archer will be loving heading into his first World Cup. He is in the dressing room as he comes across on the field – laidback and very confident in his ability.
Peter Moores has been very popular in the England dressing room. He’s got a very good record of developing players, but I felt that there are some areas in international cricket where he is a little bit exposed, for me personally around tactics and strategy.
My first day at MGM they decided to bring this lion out, male, and it was not the best time for him to see me. All of a sudden he thought I was in heat and this lion went into the dressing room, which was just a trailer on the sound stage, and went crazy.
I didn’t understand that I couldn’t just leave and become sort of a semi-regular. I had to be sat down by the line producer, Carol Himes, in my dressing room and told, ‘I hear you’re thinking about going to college.’
We went on stage with the Jefferson Airplane, Jim started singing with Grace Slick and hugging her. Then he danced off the stage, went back into the dressing room and passed out cold.
I don’t have a complacent dressing room, thank goodness.
In the dressing room, we’ve just made it really Zen: low lighting, lots of candles, and fresh, healthy food.
I don’t want to play stinking, beer-ridden clubs. It depresses me even thinking about that. I really hate it when you’re finished with a show and you’re in your dressing room with that stink of beer and sweaty girls. It brings back an ugly picture for me. I’d hate to have to do that again.
Many stories come from the dressing room that one doesn’t speak when you are playing but can do once retired.
Obviously, when you win and keep winning, it’s easier to maintain this atmosphere, but the atmosphere in the Man City dressing room is amazing.
