I’m a standup comedian who can’t drive. I have never learned. I don’t trust my hand-eye coordination. You’re looking at someone who once dropped a cricket ball on to his own head during a routine catching practice; I don’t think it’s a great idea to have me in control of a high-speed metal death robot.
The only difference between a comedian and someone else? We need to make people laugh more.
I believe that any type of education can be great, but an education about ourselves can create something wonderful. I am a comedian, but people have called me a motivational speaker. I don’t really consider myself that at all.
My first films were comedy, ‘Murder By Death,’ and ‘The Cheap Detective.’ But now they won’t think of me as a comedian. Now, they think of me as a bad guy, and I can’t do comedy.
You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual – which nothing is more actual than stand-up – it’s a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time – we miss that.
I wanted to be a comedian.
As a comedian who’s used to, like, punching the jokes, it’s hard to teach yourself that that’s not the strong choice in the sense that you have to really have to dial it back.
I will start shooting for part two of ‘Tom Dick and Harry’ for which I am turning into a comedian and this is a big jump in my career.
I worked as a comedian for 23 years, 51 weeks a year.
Being a comedian is harder if you can’t drive. You can’t take last-minute gigs as easily, because the on-the-day train ticket is your whole fee, if not more. Getting a lift off someone you’ve never met is normal, but still odd.
I classify myself as a comedian, but I’m one of those comedians who also acts so that I can split the difference and feel insecure about both.
Cinema was my passion and I am sure that if you are talented, nobody can sideline you because you are just a comedian.
The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.
I think the fundamental issue with comedians is everyone wants to be a famous comedian. That’s a really difficult thing to achieve in comedy.
If the ‘Chappelle’s Show’ had stayed on, I seriously doubt I would have developed this fast as a stand-up comedian. I probably would never have taken stand-up comedy really seriously.
I can’t stand tribute bands. It’s nice, bless ’em, but it’s not right. They can’t capture the right spirit. You never see a tribute comedian, a tribute Les Dawson.
I think I identify as a comedian before kind of anything else. Before I identify as a person, as a human being with empathy.
My roots were in acting. That’s all I wanted to be. Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn’t cool to say, at a young age, ‘I want to be a comedian.’
I think the term ‘Twitter comedian’ can seem like a pejorative because it’s not a job, really, and there’s such a low barrier for entry to get started.
I’ve never tried to pass myself off as anything more than a comedian who wrote a dating book.
I feel like comedy is only respected on the highest level, and on every other level, it’s like a joke, like, ‘Ugh – comedian,’ you know?
I didn’t become a comedian to work this hard.
The thing that I’m known for – at least, depending on what Subreddit you go to – is being a comedian. And so, even when talking about heavy things, I still want to try to use humor to walk us in the door.
I never really saw myself as a standup comedian. I always just thought of myself as someone who used the eight minutes or 10 minutes she was allotted and had a blast.
As a comedian, frankly, I don’t care that much about bad jokes.
An academic is what I would have been if I hadn’t been successful as a comedian. I’ve never had a proper job.
I didn’t plan to be the rude middle-class comedian. You write a certain type of joke that you find funny, and mine happen to be often rude. Yes, it’s juvenile, but that’s me.
My dad is a comedian, entertainer, you know. He always likes to make people laugh. With me, it just depends on what mood I’m in. You get what you get.
By the age of 13, I knew I wanted to be a comedian like Morecambe and Wise. So, obviously, I thought I’d better start practising my interviews for Parkinson. Don’t look shocked – I wasn’t the only teenager to imagine that. Though I may have been the only one to have chosen T’Pau as my walk-on music.
I don’t claim to have all the answers; after all, I’m just a comedian who reads a lot.
Every comedian dreams of hosting ‘The Tonight Show’ and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second.
Whoever said having children makes a comedian safer and less dark is an idiot. Having a baby has filled my whole life with fear, and totally destroyed all illusion that the world is safe or fair.
I don’t mind what people say about me as long as it’s an opinion or the truth. If someone says, ‘He’s the worst comedian in the world,’ that’s fine. If someone says, ‘His face makes me want to punch the TV,’ that’s fine. But if they say, ‘Oh, and I know for a fact he hunts squirrels,’ I go: no, no, no… that’s a lie.
Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang – even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.
I’m always trying to find the next comedian that just gives me something a little funny to combine with all of the depressing news that I’m processing.
I always wanted to be a comedian but never thought I’d be a musical comedian.
Part of being a comedian is that it’s your job to look at life and regurgitate it in a funny way, to point out its absurdities.
Richard Pryor – he had stories, he had characters, he had short jokes, and he had bits. He had all those things. Eddie Murphy has all those things, and he can sing. A comedian is a bunch of stuff; it’s not just one area.
I could say I’m a writer or that I’m a musician but I don’t really do music; I do music to go with things I’m developing. Then I do act in a few things, but I’m not really an actor. I’m not a comedian, but I am known for comedy. I just don’t know. I feel like I’m a slightly interdisciplinary jack of all trades.
My mum and dad were incredibly supportive – although I suspect my dad would have preferred me to go the university route. However, I know they were extremely proud when I won the 2011 BAFTA Best Actor for playing comedian Eric Morecambe in ‘Eric and Ernie.’
From the age of 14, I remember thinking I wanted to be a comedian. But that was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. It felt like a million miles away, something I could never do, but would be great to.
When I’m going to see a comedian, I don’t want to see them hold back, and when I’m reading a book, I don’t want to hear an abridged version.
If you became a comedian in the ’80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.
I think a comedian has to be low status on some level; that gives you the right to do all sorts of jokes about all sorts of different kinds of people.
The way I see it is, you can be a character on a TV show for years, then the TV show gets cancelled and your favorite actress or favorite comedian, you don’t see them for a little while and then you see them back doing something else. You can still be enjoying them performing on TV.
If you’re a comedian, you can only really write jokes for about an hour a day, so you’ve got a lot of time to fill.
I continue to do standup because there’s a connection with a live audience – there are skills that you do learn as a standup comedian that help you on a set.
My audience has accepted me for a long time as, you know, not a fat comedian but a comedian who happens to be fat. That’s a huge difference.
As we got older, we grew comfortable in roles that met our parents’ expectations. Nora was the smart one. Delia, the comedian. I was the pretty, obedient one. And Amy was the adventurous mischief-maker.
I wanted to be a comedian. And I did that so much in high school, I couldn’t get a girlfriend.
Comedian sort of enjoys the darkness because, essentially, he’s a thug. He’s just not a nice guy.
August is the time when I can feel myself getting stronger as a comedian. I’m at the height of my powers come September.
As a comedian, you’re kind of like a blues musician; you have to live a little bit.
The skill set of pastor and comedian are incredibly similar. You want to affect people. You’re good at reading rooms. You’re persuasive, and you’re likable.
I’ve often thought I’m a short music hall comedian stuck in a leading man’s body.
I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.
I would say, up until ‘Anchorman,’ I wasn’t any kind of household name or anything, but I wasn’t necessarily identified as much with being a comedian.
Being a comedian, it’s hard. People hear ‘YouTuber,’ and they automatically think, ‘a social warrior,’ and you have to stand up for all these things.
I feel like I’ve always thought of myself as a comedian.
