Remember, folks, I am a comedian, not a journalist.
I became a dancer in self-defense. I was doing a comedy monologue and didn’t know how else to get off, so I danced off. I’ve been dancing ever since, but I’m still a comedian.
People always tell me, ‘You should do drama. You should do drama.’ Even when I first got an agent, they were like, ‘We want to send you out to be dramatic.’ And I’m like, ‘No. I’m a comedian. I’m funny. I want to do funny stuff.’
It’s embarrassing to say you want to be a comedian. Admitting that you want attention and you think you’re such a laugh.
Being a comedian, all the stress is there in the moment of doing it. The rest of it is mint: you hang out with your mates, go to the arcades, go to the cinema in the daytime, it’s like being a teenager all the time.
I want to have fun. Life ain’t no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I’m a comedian; I ain’t no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love.
In my heart, I believe I’m a top flight comedian and a top flight rapper.
I don’t know how I’ve managed to reach the age of 45 as a professional comedian and not watched more ‘Simpsons,’ considering everyone says it’s one of the best shows ever.
I had ADD as a kid and often acted as the class clown. My teachers used to tell my mom, ‘Raphael thinks he’s a real comedian.’
I have immigrant, African parents. They would say, in their Nigerian accents, ‘So you want to be a jester?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a court jester, Ma. I want to be a comedian.’
Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there’s a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.
You don’t need to be stable to be a stand-up comedian.
I owe my whole acting career to the fact that I’m a singer. I went out to Los Angeles and auditioned for a TV show called ‘Fame L.A.’ The original role was for a comedian, but they said I wasn’t very funny, so they asked me, ‘What else can you do?’ So I played a singer.
If you go back to before me doing comedy, my background was dancing and then it was musical theatre, but Im a bit of a comedian as far as my careers gone. You evolve in your career and I think thats a good thing.
I wasn’t planning on being a comedian; I just liked to laugh. Somebody said I should do it and that’s how I started.
I’ve been a stand-up comedian for years, and I can be silly.
When you see a crowd of people jumping up and down at a pop concert, all gloriously in the moment, I don’t think you’ll ever see a comedian there. They’ll all be standing at the sides, looking at how it all fits together.
It was football I enjoyed most. When I moved to L.A. to become a stand-up comedian, I thought it might be a good comedy hook to also be the punter for USFL club The L.A. Express, so I started practicing for the tryouts. Luckily, my stand-up took off, and I didn’t need to do it.
I’m actually a big fan of Kathy Griffin because I think she’s really funny. I think she’s really self-deprecating, which is something I like to see in a comedian. I think those are really the best comedians: people who can make fun of themselves.
Over the years, I’d hear Jon Stewart disavow being a journalist and say, ‘No, I’m a comedian.’ I’d be like, ‘Stop pretending. You know you’re a journalist.’
I never set my sights on being an actor or comedian or presenter.
There are certain types of stand-up, who are very successful, who do one type of joke, and never stray out of that. The audience knows that he’s the depressive comedian, he’s the up-beat, crazy comic. He’s the one that talks about real life.
You have to be delusional to be a comedian.
Once you become a comedian, you accept that people are just going to yell stuff at you.
For me personally, being a comedian is having funny ideas and saying them: it’s not just saying them. I need the complete process.
That is the job of a comedian: To take unpleasant subject matter and forcibly, with his hands, wring the funny out of it.
Mama is my chance to be a stand-up comedian. In my mind, it’s my chance to be Chris Rock.
I was like a Borscht Belt comedian trapped in the body of a 6-year-old. I was channeling Jackie Mason at 7.
Other comedians got love for me. But don’t get it twisted – I’m not a clown, I’m a comedian and work hard as an artist. Clowns go to college.
Maybe if I could ever be a successful comedian then I could be an example that Christians can also have fun.
I am not so secretly a comedian. I write a lot of my own material if you’ve seen videos I’ve done. I write jokes.
I decided I’d try my hand as a stand-up comedian, as I loved making people laugh, and appeared at the Latitude Festival, won the 2007 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year, and was a nominee for winner of the 2007 So You Think You’re Funny competition.
My family were nothing but pleased when I told them I wanted to be a comedian.
There’s something about being a parent that has, I think, made me a better comedian.
I spent more time in America, but I developed a very English sense of humour. I clicked into it deeply with Peter Sellers, who is still probably my favourite comedian.
I’m a comedian in real life. I always goof around; I’m out-going; and I talk with everybody, especially through Twitter these days!
If a comedian has a strong following, and the branded segment feels different compared to what you typically do, people will know right away that it’s not authentic to who you are as a comedian or performer. Brands need to keep that in mind.
My parents come from that immigrant culture that places a lot of emphasis on doing well scholastically. Being a comedian or an actor is such an American thing. The Iranian culture is not about dreaming. It’s about taking over your father’s business, falling into line.
I know that, as a comedian, I’ve made great strides because I’ve worked as hard as a person can work at being at least wildly amusing.
A stand-up comedian who’s assaultive and decent and has managed a career that has spanned over five decades deserves a documentary.
I’m most proud of my career as a touring comedian and musician. I love doing television, I love selling records, but when I’m at these venues with hundreds of people, and they’re all sitting listening to my music and my jokes, I feel like I could die that day, and I would be happy.
I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.
I don’t know any comedian who tailors his act to his audience. Maybe people say they do, but I can’t even imagine them.
Every black comedian in the country knew what I could do. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is paying attention.
I am a standup comedian who has performed comedy in the Middle East in front of thousands of Muslims. And believe it or not, they laughed at plenty, especially when we poked fun at local culture. The Lebanese loved it when you would make fun of their driving and how, in Lebanon, a red light is just a suggestion to stop.
I always wanted to be a comedian.
Being a comedian, people tell me stuff they shouldn’t tell their therapist.
Comedy is quite hard and it takes like a decade to figure out what kind of comedian you are, so don’t quit.
A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.
I think you’re a comedian as soon as you start. I don’t think there’s a moment where you become a full comic.
As a comedian, I am attracted to truths that are uncomfortable. I like funny bummers.
I’m not very big on politics. I’m a comedian and not that smart. I don’t have the mind capacity for it.
I know that it’s probably not a good idea for a comedian, especially a satirist, to support a public policy group or a politician. This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw ‘The Killing Fields,’ and I’ve got to tell you, I just felt like a schmuck.
I love comedy, but I did always consider myself a dramatic comedian.
I am not a comedian.
No matter what town we went to, if there was a comedian playing, I’d go watch.
I am a comedian: that means I laugh at things other people don’t laugh at and also annoys my wife sometimes.
In 2006, I left my job in sales and marketing to go full-time as a comedian, and I started off doing panto at the Lowry in Manchester.
I’m not a stand-up comedian. I’m not an improv person or anything, but I’ve always been a fan of that stuff.
If somebody said about me, ‘I don’t think his jokes are good, I don’t think he’s a good comedian,’ I don’t like to read that but that’s a fair thing to say.
If I was a young man, I might have bypassed the whole comedian-actor thing and just been a filmmaker. Then I’d probably have spent my whole life going, ‘I wonder if I could have been a comedian.’
‘I Was There Too’ talks to people who played non-starring roles in big movies. That means the likes of comedian Jimmy Pardo, who didn’t make it to the finished ‘Dreamgirls.’ Still, he recalls that when an actor is put on hold for a movie, he gets paid for two weeks just for sitting at home waiting to be called.
Every comedian feels out an audience. As you’re telling jokes, if they’re not laughing at this, you change the subject.
