I got into gambling when I was playing a casino. I was a hermit in those days. I would go onstage, go to my room, or if we had to travel, I’d get in a car or a plane, whatever. But I didn’t do anything. One day, this friend of mine said, ‘Do you want to play some blackjack?’
Well, in the theater, I think you’re actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.
We put so much of ourselves onstage and we work so hard, that I never get tired of people telling me ‘you’re awesome.’
How do you top ‘Mormon?’ I get sent scripts all the time and I don’t know what I would do next. What do you do after that? So I think if you do see me onstage, you’ll see me in something dramatic, maybe, or you’ll see me try my hand at something else. Perhaps fail, terribly, but try.
I’m amazed how unable I am to deal with the demands that are made on me as an actor. Not the one I enjoy, which is standing in front of a camera or onstage pretending to be someone else but everything else that comes with it.
This accident, or incident, happened in the most secure place I could have felt I was in: Walking onstage with my guitar, you know?
A big part of becoming a funny person was a major defense mechanism. Onstage, especially as a woman, I’ve had to be really tough. The second you show a crack, the audience can literally leave.
Regardless of injuries, we would get onstage, and as soon as we were up there it was like, bam! You were hit with an incredible force. The band came alive on stage like someone had switched us on.
If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don’t feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I’m onstage I’ll improvise around it.
I really enjoy creating music onstage, to participate in making music live.
I missed New York. Every break I had from the series, I’d fly back to the East Coast just to get back onstage.
I expect if you’re a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn’t want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
Singing and dancing will never grow old for me – I’d like to do that until I’m… actually, I think I’d like to drop dead onstage. I think that’d be just great.
I really wanted to go onstage. Not movies. But I ended up under contract to Paramount. Now I adore film work.
It doesn’t matter where we are. We can be marching down the streets of New Orleans, or we can be onstage in front of 15,000 people. As long as I know that I’m about to put my horn to my mouth and play some notes, that’s what I most look forward to.
There are definitely some set topics I go onstage with and want to talk about, but there’s also an element of improvisation and spontaneity that I like to bring to each performance and talk about uniquely in that room.
I’m very lucky to work in so many different arenas of the entertainment industry and I do enjoy them all, but making music – original music – in the studio or live onstage is definitely my favorite thing to do.
I constantly ask why one of my kids has the tantrums that he does, and it’s not because he sees videos of me acting like that onstage but because we’re bound by blood.
Onstage, it’s more of a momentary pressure.
What I love about a play is that it’s such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.
I started as a straight actor. I’d go onstage, and I’d think, ‘Wow, this is the only thing I want to work really hard at. I will rehearse fifty times on a single scene; I don’t care – I’ll do it again.’
I’m not a really religious person, but those moments onstage feel like some sort of religious experience because no one holds back, especially ‘Stay With Me’ when I finish the show. It kind of turns into an anthem when I perform it live, and it feels like there’s a lot of love in the room.
I really thrive being onstage.
We’re not idols onstage. We’re not the Rolling Stones.
I like being out onstage in front of everybody, getting that energy and giving that energy. Hopefully I am making them forget about all their problems in the world. For however many hours they are at our show, hopefully they are going to have a great time, and it makes life a little more bearable for everybody involved.
When I’m onstage, I have to have primer. Actually, the more primer, the less makeup I have to put on.
I’m always onstage, and everyone there already loves me, so I go with this certain confidence.
Frontmen come alive when they come onstage.
I talked with labels and they wouldn’t help with my international career. They said, ‘Saara, if you’re in Finland you just have to sing in Finnish.’ That led to this situation where I felt very lonely. I was really sad and still I was doing gigs all the time. I’d go onstage crying but I was still trying to sing.
I’m a Brooklyn guy onstage, and I try to really feed my fans with the kind of material they expect from me.
All the truly great stand-ups say, ‘I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I’m doing my work.’ To me, in the end, the surest thing is work.
It’s intimidating when you have to stand onstage amongst a bunch of men who are dedicated to maintaining peak musculature and athleticism, and they’re six-five, 240 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. It’s a lot to stand up to… My goal is to not look like Chris Farley.
I continue to be very shy. I think a lot of actors and performers are really weird, shy people working it out onstage. I don’t know why that is.
I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that’s what I did.
It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage – and I had to learn everything.
I don’t know what Tracy Morgan does onstage, but I can assure you, it’s no act.
The most important thing you can do as a performer is to be yourself, or be an onstage version of yourself. If you’re not being true to yourself, and somebody likes that other version of you, you’re kind of stuck.
I come from a working-class family in Pittsburgh, whereas ‘Mike & Molly’ deals with the working class in Chicago. I swear a little, but I pretty much talk the same. It’s not like when you see someone like Tim Allen and he’s a lot bluer onstage.
As a dancer, one of my many teachers along the way made the comment that who I was onstage and who I was off were two totally different people.
All I want to do is be onstage. A performer needs to perform.
Why should we change onstage? We’re not trying to be something big and fancy, it’s just us, doing what we do, we’d like to keep it that way.
I’m always writing; I’m always jotting things down on paper or making notes in my iPhone. Then I’ll make myself sit down and kind of shape it up, but there’s really no other way to practice other than onstage.
Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.
In a sense, the rumours suggesting I had quit were true: I had retired, but only from the personal-appearance end. I did that because I had always felt conspicuous onstage, and I’m not the sort of person who likes to be an exhibitionist.
I love theater. To have the people onstage right there, to be working in concert with other artists, this is a like a school of fish moving together.
The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I’m 41, and I still feel like I haven’t found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.
I was in the original cast of ‘Wicked’, and that got a bad review in ‘The New York Times,’ and it’s the most successful thing that’s ever been put onstage.
I’ve been onstage once for one performance with four days’ rehearsal.
What I’m pretty much giving you when you see me onstage is me; it’s not a fake character.
I feel like a little beast when I’m onstage, and I feel like my fans have that little beast inside of them, too: this hunger for life.
My first stand-up experience, like most comics, was horrible. I got booed offstage. I thought I was funnier than I was. But the walk from the back of the room to the stage was the most excited I’d ever been about anything in my life other than kissing a girl. That’s how I knew I had to get back onstage and do it again.
I’ve heard New York actors say Chicago actors intimidate them because apparently we’re the real nitty-gritty actors who’re in a town where being onstage doesn’t necessarily get you anything except your craft.
On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.
A woman is like an actress: she’s always onstage.
We weren’t the Temptations, but when we came out onstage, the people always gave us a special respect because our songs were of an inspirational quality.
I’ve always enjoyed playing live onstage.
When we’re onstage, it’s like mind reading: we’re on the same page.
I’m sure when alternative comedy started, before which – Billy Connolly aside – standup was essentially a person being racist and sexist onstage, there was also the sense that this was the death of comedy. But it’s just progress.
