I was madly in love with Elvis Presley. Dad wasn’t into it at all, at least not for himself as a performer. He used to say, ‘Mr. Cole does not rock n’ roll.’
Yes, I am transgendered but I also am a cross-dresser – I dress as a woman. It’s not that I just want to be seen as a female in our society, I’m also a drag queen and a performer – there are many levels there.
I didn’t spend my childhood trying to be a performer; it was a big surprise to me that this was what I was doing. But it has always felt quite natural to me. I wasn’t taught to do what I do; I found out bit by bit.
I want to be safe in the knowledge that I can tour and play festivals for a long time. The main thing is that I want a good reputation as a live performer. If I have that, I’d be so happy.
I don’t get to do a lot of fight scenes on ‘Sanctuary,’ but I’m a trained fighter; I’ve been doing martial arts for years and, you know, I’m very active physically; I used to be a circus performer.
I’m still finding my feet in many ways as a performer. I’m not an extrovert, and certainly the attention isn’t what drew me to it, and I find that quite jarring at times. I used to stress a lot about shows and get palpitations before shows, but eventually you learn to love it, and it is a thrill.
You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he’ll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.
I’m a performer, so when I get to any space, I make it my own for that moment and have fun.
The ego certainly is the biggest obstacle as an artist or performer, so any chance you get to destroy that is really healthy.
I love being a performer. It’s like a hole that never closes. It’s something in you that never dies.
I live in Nashville, and I love to sing. When I’m on stage, I feel like a performer for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures and singing along, and that part’s wonderful, but I do live in Nashville. I live the most boring life away from what you see me on camera doing.
I think on a bucket list for a performer is definitely doing a stage show, whether it’s in Vegas or on Broadway or whatever.
Being a performer and recording artist and playing ‘World of Warcraft’ – that’s a pretty time-intensive combination.
My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I’m sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.
I made a deal with myself that no matter where I go, if I see a street performer, I’d tip them. It’s sweet to know that you can get started from the generosity of others.
I went to see ‘Kinky Boots’ to see my friend Billy Porter in his groundbreaking performance. But while backstage, I was hoping for a chance to meet this young, dynamic performer Annaleigh Ashford. Her comic timing was brilliant. And she is obviously a triple threat.
I was the highest-paid street performer, probably, in the history of Chicago. I was making like $800 a day.
My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer, my mother’s into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence.
Co-writing the ‘True Blood’ comic is a dream come true both as a performer on the show and as longtime comic fan. It’s a real privilege to build on the rapidly growing ‘True Blood’ mythology.
I didn’t want to be a performer. I didn’t want to be famous.
The high point for me in my career was when Sinatra called me his favourite performer in the Fifties. And I’ve been sold out ever since.
I wanted to be a performer, not someone who introduced other performers.
I was rejected by every agent in Australia when I was starting out. No one would represent me, because I didn’t fit into a particular box, and I wasn’t a trained musician or performer, but history has perhaps proven that perhaps I have something to give.
Every performer who ever performed in rock and roll or even close to it is lying if they tell you that they weren’t influenced in some way or another by Elvis Presley. He turned the world around.
I’m not a programmer; I’m more of a performer. I’m really bad at math.
It’s important to be out as a performer.
Every performer will have a bad night. It’s just inevitable.
Madonna is my absolute queen – as a performer, there’s no one better than her.
I want to be remembered as a great performer.
Listen, I’m a performer, and all I’m worried about is just performing and just doing… This is what makes me happy, so no matter what, I’m going to give it my best shot, and I’m going to put myself all out there and give it 100%, and whatever happens, happens.
Will Ferrell in ‘Talladega Nights.’ He’s a very generous performer. He’s kind of just one of the guys, but his name happens to be above the title.
The critics noticed me as a performer only with ‘Dor.’
Early on, I was a performer playing classical music. It’s in my DNA in a way that I can’t begin to extract it.
I think I was about seven when people started telling my parents I would be an actor or a performer of some kind.
I didn’t go to drama school to be a musical theatre performer. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t go to do that; I went to be an actor.
One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.
If you’re growing up in a chaotic world without reason, your instinct is to become a performer and control the circumstances around you. You lead from weakness into strength; you have an undefended back.
A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.
I don’t ever want to think my time is up as a performer. I have been afforded the opportunity to sell 150 million albums, to travel to places I never thought I would go. I’m going to keep on performing. I hope it never ends.
By the time I would have graduated, at 22, I was a writer and featured performer on Saturday Night Live.
I stopped performing because I don’t have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn’t want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn’t want to do it.
I’m a better writer than a performer. Everyone wants to feel like they’re a bit of a polymath, and I certainly feel that.
As a solo performer, it’s total involvement. What I do is to break down the wall between audience and performer.
Honestly, I’m a shallow performer. I just go with the text and feel my way around it. There’s not a whole lot of shaping.
When I perform in north India, I have a set of songs, and when I am in the south, I tend to prepare a playlist of Tamil songs along with Bollywood numbers. As a performer, I feel the pulse of the people!
I don’t want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone.
I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.
I think a lot of people clamored for me to be a world champion or to be in this position but that I needed to be more serious and fit a certain mold. One of my things as a performer is that what I learned in our journey was, honestly, it was so much more rewarding to do it our way.
More than an actor, I am a performer… I’m a great believer – honestly so, shamelessly so, vulgarly so – that cinema is for entertainment. If you want to send messages, there’s the postal service.
I’m not running after glamorous roles, honestly. I’m a performer and want to perform instead of standing like a mannequin wearing a lot of makeup.
Initially, I didn’t have much knowledge about cinema. But once I started doing good films, precisely after ‘Kaaka Muttai,’ people started respecting me as a performer.
I think the Oscar is the big money award; that means you’ve made it in a money sense. The Tony has always represented – to me, and most actors that I’ve talked to – an artistic award. It means you’re an artist and not just a popular performer.
To put what you see on paper is the same as funneling what you feel through yourself as a performer.
An inevitable question asked of a performer who has made a modest success of his career is, ‘How has success changed you?’ It’s a loaded question because it automatically assumes that there has been a change. And, in a sense, the assumption is a correct one. Basically, however, most people remain pretty much the same.
I was a shy kid, but somehow I knew I would make it as a performer. I’d always be telling my mum that I was going to be a famous singer. In my school yearbooks I would write, ‘Remember me when I’m famous.’ I knew I had a gift.
It seems like a contradiction, but the shy person who is a performer actually does make sense, because in a way, when you’re young and shy, making people laugh is a good way to make friends. It’s an instant connection.
