Lisa McMann Quotes

For the first six or eight months at Juilliard I felt paralysed. I didn't know what I was doing.

There are several times when I walked into a room and just felt like such a sham. That's the problem with auditioning.

What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give 'em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The lack of applause - that I can respond to.

I'm not an actress, you know. I don't know what's going on. And I'm supposed to be the villain.

I never went to concerts when I was a kid, so I never knew if what I was doing onstage was right.

On stage, I am in the dark.

I really do not like auditioning... it's hard because you never know what you're going to walk into in a room.

I was so intimidated by the thought of improvising back in the '80s when I was in Chicago. I think the opportunity only even came up once that I can recall, and I turned down the offer. It was to go improvise in some club in the suburbs or something. Good God, I couldn't think of anything more frightening than to get up there without a plan.

I think I'm still trying to find my feet as an actor. And I know it ain't brain surgery, but it confuses me and it comes between me and my sleep a lot.

To me, I don't feel like a dancer. I feel like an idiot trying to be a dancer.

The hardest thing I do on stage is to self-induce amnesia. I want to go on every night and say, 'I've never sat in this chair. I've never been in this room.'

I've dreamt lucidly about how my Broadway debut would go and what that would feel like, but I know that I can't be prepared for that.

I think that no number of rehearsals can guarantee the outcome of a live show.

I was paralyzed with nerves on 'Taste of Honey' and never quite knew what was going on.

You'll get, like, 10 pages of sides the night before, and you have to go in and just wing it. For someone like me, I came from the theater, and I don't like putting anything up in front of anybody until it's really, really ready, so it can be very frustrating.

When I first started my acting career, I only knew what my acting teacher taught me. When a director gave me an impromptu direction, I didn't know what he wanted me to do, and I wanted to escape from the place.

I realized, "Oh my god, this is an enormous play. And it's almost all me. Big. big chunks of speeches, speeches, speeches." And I started to panic.

I've had terrible, terrible, terrible shows where I just thought, "That was off-key" or I forgot lines or I thought I looked like an idiot, and then you're leaving and talking to people, and they're like, "I had the best time of my life! That was amazing!" You just never know.

I can't really sing and play live, because I can't play bass efficiently and sing at the same time. If I concentrated on the vocals, I'd mess up the bass, and if I concentrated on the bass, I'd forget the lines.

As an actor, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never known what I was doing. I show up the first day, I'm scared, and I just hang out. It's like being in detention - you just wait for it to be over. Then gradually I start to figure out what's going on.

I feel vulnerable when I am underprepared. This applies to underpreparedness with just about anything, especially work.

For me, because I've had classical theater training, when people say, "Oh, my god, the play is amazing!," I'll never get to see it because I'm in it.

I was at awards shows and felt really lost so it was good to play someone who was really lost.

I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.

There's a big difference in doing a play or doing any project that not a lot of people see and then a project that you know everyone will see. There is more pressure, performance anxiety per se. And then when you do and what you love is really put to test.