CASEY NICHOLAW

I have a Tony Award now. It hasn't changed too much in the theater world, but it gives me entree for film stuff and TV stuff, where people will see me more easily now because they know me.

I look around at people who had success so early and then didn't know what to do with themselves.

Bouncing ideas off people when you're thinking up comedy is great.

I went to UCLA for a year and a quarter. There were too many students at UCLA interested in what I was interested in, and they couldn't accommodate all of us. I wasn't allowed to take voice or dance, only theater and acting. So I saved my money and, at 19, moved to New York.

In '92, I got my first Broadway show as a performer - 'Crazy for You.' I was in the ensemble. In fact, I was in eight Broadway shows as a dancer. Seven of them were original shows. That's how I learned to create something from the ground up.

I was always bossy as a kid. I made my friends do shows that I wrote and would take them on tour from house to house.

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 moved to New York and couldn't get a job as an actor. And waited tables for so long.

Sometimes you feel like people go, 'Oh, he just does funny dances,' or 'That's cute.' It drives me a little crazy when someone does a dance number where all they do is kick to their head for five minutes, and everyone's like, 'That choreography is amazing.' It takes a lot to choreograph a number that also gets laughs in it.

It blows me away that my parents, they really weren't much into theater, but they recognized that in me. When I think about the things they did to support that, I'm blown away.

I went to UCLA for a year and a quarter. There were too many students at UCLA interested in what I was interested in, and they couldn't accommodate all of us. I wasn't allowed to take voice or dance, only theater and acting. So I saved my money and, at 19, moved to New York.

I look around at people who had success so early and then didn't know what to do with themselves.

I was in eighth grade when I did my first Junior Theatre show. I was in 'Annie Get Your Gun' as a dancing Indian.

I was always bossy as a kid. I made my friends do shows that I wrote and would take them on tour from house to house.

I'm from San Diego. My parents weren't involved in theater, but my mother encouraged my interest in it. She bought me the cassette tape to 'A Chorus Line' and she took me and a friend out of school one day and drove us up to L.A. for a matinee. Afterward, we ate in the cafeteria. I was in junior high school. She saw the direction I was going in.

I have a Tony Award now. It hasn't changed too much in the theater world, but it gives me entree for film stuff and TV stuff, where people will see me more easily now because they know me.

In '92, I got my first Broadway show as a performer - 'Crazy for You.' I was in the ensemble. In fact, I was in eight Broadway shows as a dancer. Seven of them were original shows. That's how I learned to create something from the ground up.

Sometimes you feel like people go, 'Oh, he just does funny dances,' or 'That's cute.' It drives me a little crazy when someone does a dance number where all they do is kick to their head for five minutes, and everyone's like, 'That choreography is amazing.' It takes a lot to choreograph a number that also gets laughs in it.

Bouncing ideas off people when you're thinking up comedy is great.

It blows me away that my parents, they really weren't much into theater, but they recognized that in me. When I think about the things they did to support that, I'm blown away.

I moved to New York and couldn't get a job as an actor. And waited tables for so long.

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.'