JOEL GREY

Whenever I get to work with great actors, I'm happy.

All the things you do, even the shows that don't work, are as much work, but you learn more from the things that are difficult.

My mother loved fashion. She was a beauty and had enough sewing skills that she could re-create the looks in magazines. She also was enormously charismatic.

I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.

I've always wanted to do, oddly enough, a live variety show, but only with a live audience.

I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.

My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I'm sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.

I'm essentially an actor. And the fact that I got away with singing and dancing for a long time is still a miracle to me.

When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.

For me to take a role, I read a script, and I think, 'Wow, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I want to try.'

I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' and jokes such as describing current events as 'ancient history.' Boy, did the audience roar at that one.

My dad was a really funny, really talented guy who had a great success in a limited audience. But from him, I learned that he always felt the audience was entitled to 150 per cent. If he was performing at an event, he'd keep playing until the last person had finished dancing.

When I was eight, I went to the theatre, and I remember looking at the stage afterward and pointing and saying, 'I want to do that.' I don't think that's ever changed.

The theater is the place where people create ideas and send messages out, and you learn, and I think it's a fair venue for disagreement and enlightenment.

I love 'Cabaret' and 'George M!' They're both incredible as far as I'm concerned.

The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.

I never learned to speak Yiddish, ever.

A lot of people have problems thinking of you doing more than one thing. If you do one thing, then you couldn't possibly do another thing well. Of course, we know that's not so.

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

There is nothing I enjoy more than doing my show.

Looking back now, I can see that my dad was a real fighter. A lot of people thought, 'Why don't you keep the Jewish stuff quiet?' They were anti-Semitic Jews. People who were afraid. People who came here and made it and anglicized themselves and didn't want to associate with their past.

I am concerned about the musical theater, selfishly, because I love it.

I wasn't sure what it would take to make it in the theater, but despite the struggle, that was all I ever really wanted.

There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.