Every three or four shows, we have somebody that will come up onstage and propose marriage.
I had just been to the David Bowie Diamond Dogs concert, and I kid you not: When I watched him onstage, a lightning bolt came out of the sky and zapped me. I knew at that moment, that’s what I wanted to do with my life. It was my calling.
Onstage I’m the one in control – I’m not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It’s very freeing.
You don’t realize how much you miss it until you get back onstage and feel that buzz.
Once I get out onstage, it’s the same sort of basic production that it is anywhere else. But I might be a little bit aware that there might be people I know out there, who wondered where I was.
There was a time where I knew I was as funny as many dudes, but I had people telling me, ‘You have to wear a dress onstage. You need to be more feminine.’
I like my jumpsuits. They’re easy to get about in, I can move a bit onstage, there’s nothing to tuck in, and I don’t look like a little girl.
If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That’s publicity, man.
It was in San Diego and I was onstage and couldn’t remember how to play the guitar properly. I was in terrible pain and my nervous system was just going wild, like somebody had just run a car over me.
When you start performing, you realize that you have to separate yourself from the pack. So I would never wear bell-bottoms, which everybody else was wearing. I had short hair – and to see a 21-year-old guy walk onstage without longish hair was, in itself, weird. Every entertainer needs a shtick.
I feel most free onstage. The audience, it’s an abstraction. You don’t really see anyone out there, but you feel the audience inside you.
By high school, I was telling everyone, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,’ because my dad was always saying to me, ‘Pick a career path where you’re always going to be necessary.’ But by junior year, I was president of choir, I was the lead in the school play, and I just loved being onstage performing.
I took dance from a very early age, although my first recital, I remember refusing to go onstage. I think I was three. It’s funny because that stage was also my high school theater stage.
I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.
I can’t dance. If I try, I’ll trip onstage.
When I first started acting in college, at Cal, the thing that I loved about acting was not being onstage but going into rehearsals. The thing, as I look back on it now, that I was most attracted to, was that I felt like I’d found my family. It was just a bunch of loonies.
In film, you’re always using your tools, your body, your voice, your emotions, but onstage, you use them in a different way.
Everyone will clearly be a bit nervous and scared before going onstage. But what I do is just remember that this is my passion. Once I get on the stage and see everyone smiling and looking at me, the joy that it brings to me makes me forget all about my nerves.
It doesn’t matter how tired I am; I will always still be happy. As soon as you go onstage, you get adrenaline. You hear the crowd: they’re screaming your name. They have posters. The energy gives you energy.
Being onstage is just a feeling that you cannot duplicate anywhere else because the energy that the audience is giving you forces you to give more energy. It’s such an output and exchange of energy. You can’t do that anywhere else.
Onstage, even though you’re here together with the other actor, face-to-face, playing out the scene, you also have that other ear pointed out toward the audience and how they’re listening. That informs a lot.
I remember as a little kid watching the Opry from the nosebleeds, so to stand onstage and be invited to be a member was really, really cool.
I got to a point where I wanted to have some dignity in what I’m saying onstage. I want people to hear what I’m saying, regardless of whether or not it gets a laugh. That became a lot more rewarding than straight acting could ever be for me.
When I was a child, I used to dream about being onstage in front of thousands of people, and it happened. It’s not about the fame; it’s about people being touched.
I consider myself something of a self-taught anthropologist. I try not to talk about something unless it’s something I love. But if it’s something that really annoys me, I fixate on it, learn something about it and then, when I’m onstage, it comes out.
The more comfortable I got onstage, the more comfortable I got expressing myself in a physical manner. And it almost shocked people – ‘Oh, is there something happening?’
We’ve just always felt like we had a product onstage that represented us.
I had a dream I was onstage naked and I forgot how to play the songs.
Michael Buble is seriously my favorite entertainer. Have you ever seen the guy in concert? He’s hilarious. Women love him. Guys want to meet him. He has everything that I wish I could do onstage. And I’m guessin’ he’s a good-lookin’ guy – although he’s not one of ‘People’ magazine’s sexiest men.
When I go onstage and am performing the way I want to… I finally feel like myself.
I would be onstage all the time if I could.
I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?
Performing is my passion. Being onstage is at once exhilarating, beguiling, and fulfilling. But it’s hard.
The two hours onstage is great. But I can only play a show and then take a night off. I have to sing for two hours, and then I’ve gotta rest it for a night. So it’s the other 46 hours that are just boring as heck.
I draw and play the piano badly. But when I’m doing those things, I’m concentrating so hard there’s no room for worry. I find that onstage, too.
People buy a ticket to see your show, so from the moment I get onstage, I can have no insecurities, because they’re already there. You have to get people to listen. If they listen, everything’s cool.
I was in ‘Seussical,’ and I was in a cage onstage in a purple yarn suit singing backup, and I was like: ‘I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.’ I will say for the record that I did love the show, but I was like: ‘I want to do something else. I need a little more.’
I’m used to being the only black guy. I’ve seriously walked onstage, looked out in the audience, 15,000 people – and I’m the only one in the place. It’s no big deal. My whole career’s been like that.
I’m most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.
I would get ill before going onstage – something about getting in front of people, and if they don’t laugh, I’m a bomb. I got over it when somebody laughed.
I was onstage one night and was singing. I hit one note, and I just doubled over. It was like being punched hard in the back. I couldn’t put my back up on the plane seat because of the pain. I got massages, thinking it was muscle spasms. The doctor told me at the time that it was my pancreas. I didn’t even know.
What I wear onstage is so stylized and bold.
Playing onstage, I’m always aware of where the bathrooms are. When Crohn’s hits, I have to run, or it won’t be pretty.
Onstage was where I felt the most confident and in control and free, and as I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten more and more daunting. And I think that’s also part of my desire to keep confronting that and pushing through to find that childlike or youthful ignorance against fear and keep at it.
My intention of making acting a career was about being onstage.
I started using sunglasses in Alabama. I was going to do a show with Patsy Cline and Bobby Vee, and I left my clear glasses on the plane. I only had the sunshades, and I was quite embarrassed to go onstage with them, but I did it.
When you go onstage, the process of getting you from the dressing room to the stage is all about ego.
I like that because the fans want to see onstage what they know so well from the big screen.
Before going onstage you can always feel the adrenaline pouring through your veins.
It’s me, it’s my habit to perform live onstage every four, five years. In Italy, it’s my habit.
I really enjoy theater. Performing live onstage is helping me to grow as an actress.
I have worked in animation on ‘King of the Hill.’ I’ve worked in late-night with ‘The Daily Show.’ I’ve worked on single-camera stuff, whether it was a movie or television. I have performed onstage.
If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience.
I have fun with my clothes onstage; it’s not a concert you’re seeing, it’s a fashion show.
Onstage, there’s a separation between character and audience; onscreen, you can go to a deeper place.
One of the big conversations I’m trying to have onstage right now is that to be pro-woman, you don’t have to be anti-man. Saying all men suck makes you look like an idiot. And it’s not helpful.
Rain – his power and charisma onstage is impressive, and I hope to have that one day.
I like to wear dresses and skirts when I go onstage because the attitude that I have is, ‘I’m so excited to introduce myself to you.’ And I want to be wearing what I’d be wearing to a date or a dinner party.
