Words matter. These are the best Billy Porter Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Broadway! Broad-way! I don’t aspire to the middle. I aspire to the tip-tip-top of it all.
You can’t ever put yourself in a position where someone is requiring you to inhabit somebody else’s energy. You have to own your thing, or own it with very fiber of your being.
I’m in love with what a high heel does to a leg: how it makes a woman or a man feel. It’s empowering.
I just feel like we as a human race tend to fear that which we don’t understand. It’s cause for a lot of bad things and bad behavior to exist on the planet. Artists have a way of touching people and changing minds in a way that sometimes other mediums don’t.
For years I tried to put myself in a box, and it frustrated me, so I had to let go and let the universe take its course.
I took ‘Grease’ to play my trump card, my voice, and get attention that would lead to auditions for serious work like ‘Angels in America.’ But I backed myself into a corner with ‘Grease,’ and it took me 17 years to get out.
When you grow up in the church, the only translation in that insular world that people understand is preaching. You’re supposed to be a minister. So I was going down that path, and then I saw the Tonys.
I do ‘sissy with a heart of gold’ really well.
When you’re doing what you love, it’s not exhausting at all, actually. It’s completely empowering and exhilarating.
My truth is I am gay and out, and if I can’t do that in my music, then I don’t need it. Fortunately, I do feel like there is a movement against homophobia, and I hope to be part of that.
Just because you’re working does not mean you’re making money. That’s two very different things in show business.
There was a time in the ’90s where, as an African-American man, you had to be a misogynistic R&B star or a rapper, and I didn’t fit into either one of those. I was advised by my label to remain closeted at that time.
When I was younger, I did what I now call ‘extreme singing.’ I could do this thing where I would sing really high. I can’t really do that anymore, at my age. My voice has shifted. It’s changed.
I’ve always been passionate about fashion.
I’m trying to embrace social media because it gives artists a little more power than we’ve had in the past.
Many movie stars or American Idol contestants sort of fall into theater… and say, ‘Oh, yeah, I would love to do theater.’ And then they get here and say, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this actually is a craft!’ It’s not just show up one day and do it. It’s show up eight times a week, twice on Wednesdays and twice on Saturdays.
Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I’m political. Sometimes that’s all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.
I was fine being in the closet at the beginning of my career because that’s what you were supposed to be – until I realized that it didn’t serve anybody, and I was left feeling utterly empty. This is who I am, so I’ve gotta be me.
People don’t see me in traditional roles; I’m not getting cast in the revival of ‘Company’ as Bobby.
I don’t in any way disparage any time I’ve had in the trenches because it really has made me the artist I am today.
I had something nobody else could do – I sang in a way that separated me – and, when you’re trying to get noticed, you play your trump card.
There’s this misconception that I’ve been turning down roles. It’s just not true. The reality is, there was nothing for me to do, nobody was calling, the phone wasn’t ringing.
