White House staff spends enormous amounts of time planning a president’s every move so that his public persona reflects the mood of the public.
I love Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart because they’re bringing irony back into American humor, which is a delicious treat. The entire Colbert persona of being extreme right-wing when he’s not at all is highly amusing. He does it so well, but sometimes a little too well. My wife is convinced he’s completely that way.
I met Jack Nicholson, who lived up to his persona, and when we met, he lifted the sunglasses he was wearing at 2 in the morning, and giggling, he told me, ‘You look the way I feel all the time.’
I made the decision when I came to Seagram that it had to be OK that my public persona would be bad. It’s the downside of a family business: anything good is because I’m somebody’s son; otherwise, I’m a schmuck.
The thing is when you play a character it’s the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there’s gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it’s the personality that comes across.
My persona has always been what a man was never supposed to be. Outrageous, gregarious, crazy, silly, funny.
I feel like I’ve built up this persona of always being positive and always being happy, and I worried if my audience sees me not in that light, will they think less of me? Will they discredit me? Will I just be nothing?
I don’t read reviews and I don’t know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.
Well, you create your own persona, don’t you? And you have to live with that. But the people that I meet, they don’t think that I’m a lunatic. And if they do, then that’s OK, because it means that I’m playing the parts all right.
Portraying Mozart is a scary task. Whenever I’m asked to portray actual historic figures, it comes with extra accountability. Not just to your director and playwright, but to the man himself and the beloved persona that the public forms.
It’s strange – there’s a public persona of me that does nothing for me: the side of me where it’s ‘US Weekly,’ where 12 cars sit outside my house because of who I married. That side never shuts off. I would like that to shut off sometimes, yes.
I honestly think that with our generation – Alex Wang, Prabal Gurung, Jason Wu, Christian Cota, Robert Geller – there’s a different expectation of what our behavior should be. People expect designers to be good businesspeople and PR people, and I don’t think partying is a part of that persona the way it used to be.
Tiger is free to explore the world himself. He is a man whose persona is totally different from what I had during my initial days. There can’t be any comparison between the two of us, since he is absolutely different.
I have never liked Morrissey, and I still don’t. I think it’s hilarious, actually, what things I’ve heard about him, what he’s really like, and his public persona is so different. He’s such an actor.
I believe that Maryse’s persona was the best female persona in years within the WWE.
When people start thinking of you more as a persona, they are less inclined to allow you to move into different areas. Sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes they’re just very stereotypical or restricted in their own thinking of what they’ll allow you to do.
I ran out of any type of persona. I just had to be me.
I don’t consider myself enigmatic, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.
I fell into presenting after doing about a decade of parody shows of presenter-based shows, and a lot of it was me parodying a presenter, so when I started doing ‘Have I Got News For You’, I carried on that persona.
On telly, if it’s not the right kind of show, I revert back to my ‘Girlie Show’ persona, become this daft, bawdy caricature of myself and I’m not actually like that, I’m actually quite – not clever, but smart with my words.
I relate more to 90 percent of America because I look like ’em, act like ’em. I’m not above anybody; I put my pants on the same way. Some guys try to live up to their persona. I’m just me.
I play characters. I don’t think I really have a persona per se. I don’t play the same guy every time. I show up, you don’t know what I’m gonna do. I like it that way. I’ve intentionally tried to do it that way. I think that’s what’s interesting.
With the stand-up comic on TV, whether it’s Seinfeld or Cosby or Roseanne, more important than their knowledge of how to tell a joke is their knowledge of themselves, or the persona they’ve created as themselves. So that when you’re in a room with writers, you can say, ‘Guys, that’s a funny line, but I wouldn’t say it.’
I find it really cool when people have this artist persona they can put on. They can go out and act like this other person; I can’t pull that off… I can’t censor myself.
The risk of being honest can lead to people ostracizing you. It’s easier to cling to the persona, the stage, the reputation that people want to see.
The character in ‘Arya’ was so close to my real life persona. The director saw me once and felt I was the right guy for the role because my body language was so flamboyant. In real life, too, I am very peppy and full of life.
You need someone to ground you because if you start believing that your public persona is your only and real persona, then you’re looking at a very long and lonely old age.
Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One’s inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one’s public persona.
Even on the stage, I’ve played a bit of a persona, and the persona I played was a much brasher, more arrogant, less aware, less educated version of me.
I didn’t want the public in my personal life at all – I thought that people might perceive me as too normal, and I’d lose that larger-than-life rock star persona. You’ve got to protect that!
People associate me with being pernickety and down. In the past, I was guilty of keeping myself like that just to maintain my comic persona.
Diamond Dallas Page didn’t have that larger-than-life persona, but he had a different connection with the audience.
To combat social awkwardness, I would just act like I couldn’t be bothered – that kind of aloof persona or aloof demeanor. It’s so off-putting.
Part of Obama’s persona is self-reliance. He’s calm; he’s cool; he’s self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton’s sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.
Even when I’m having fun, I’m constantly thinking of ways to incorporate it into my WWE persona, as that way I’m serving two purposes at once.
To hide behind a computer and an anonymous persona to spew hate at another person is despicable.
I’m always thinking about songs and how I can sing a song that would resonate with my voice, my persona. I want it to be a pleasant experience that’s not just about hearing my voice. I remember some singers whose voices were so pretty, it didn’t matter what they sang – you loved it.
The street-wear and the very androgynous tomboyish girl, that’s just not this new persona I’m introducing… it’s me 24/7.
I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.
I think my perception of my own life is different and the fact that Lauren and myself are together. I’ve never felt this free or happy and so that permeates onto my onstage persona and to my working environment.
One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he’s doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona.
Sinatra is so connected with the persona of the ‘Guys and Dolls’ characters even though he had great conflicts with Frank Loesser personally.
As I get older, I’m sort of fascinated with the idea of somebody who could construct an entire persona for themselves – one that was really, in a lot of ways, fundamentally at odds with who they really were as a person.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and I feel like everyone judges people: regardless of whether they know someone or not, they have an opinion based on the persona of the person. I guess you can only have a real opinion of who they are as a person once you meet someone.
If you go overseas and meet people, you can detect a Singaporean from across the street – the way he dresses, slightly; the way he talks; the way he acts. There is a persona which is recognizable and which we are proud of.
I was trained as an actor and taught to believe at a very young age that I could be anything and do anything, and then you find yourself painted into a corner by your own image or persona.
Every single day I’m alive or you’re alive, we’re choosing this life and this persona. We choose to be the stay-at-home mom who loves baking and Pilates. We choose to be a hipster who loves coffee shops and artisan goods. We choose to be a lawyer who runs marathons and only eats organic.
Where Brock Lesnar would be without Paul Heyman? He would certainly be on top. He would certainly be the number one box office attraction. He would just be doing it without someone who truly understands his persona like I do.
