Eddie Izzard Quotes

So much of a stand-up's life is doing live radio and having to be funny and quick on the spot with these strangers, and sort of surgical in terms of how funny I can be in three minutes.

I don't think of any sentence as a "one-liner", but I do pay attention to how people actually speak when they are being funny. Rhythm is key.

I've always liked being funny and making people laugh. I was a cut-up when I was a kid, and was always doing bits for my friends and family.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.

I have a very high respect for professional comedians. What they do astonishes me. You have to be really smart and absorb everything, repackage it, bring it back to the person, and make them laugh at themselves. I can make people laugh during my talks because they didn't come to have me make them laugh. It's added value. So my job is way easier than that of a professional comic.

This is why Jessica Biel is a successful actress: because, despite the punchlines, you know how to tell a joke.

I was never a hammy child. But I could make people laugh.

Humor is like a rhythm; it's like music. And you throw a couple of extra syllables in, you wreck the beat and you kill the laugh. So I try to follow the writers very carefully because I know how carefully they worked to do it that way.

Comedy's easy for me now - it's all about timing and the way you deliver lines. I use facial expressions to get the point across.

For aspiring comedians? Don't listen to me. Just go on stage and do what you think is funny.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.

While I'm trying to be a villain, Tyler Posey's just making me break character all the time. It's hilarious.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment.

You never know what you're in for when you take a role. When you're reading the script, you're in some café in New York and you're loving life and it sounds great because it's like reading a book. When you step into that book and you actually have to play it out, for real, it's a totally different ball game.

If a great comedy landed on my doorstep, I would find it hard to say no.

I know how to make an audience laugh, 'cause I grew up on Third Rock from the Sun, week after week in front of audiences, making them laugh.

Comedy, I figured, was the thing that came to me the most easily. Playing the trumpet and piano took practice. I thought that was a waste of time. I'd go out on the street corner and be funny. In a minute.

If you want to make people laugh, your face must remain serious.

If a joke is too hard to visualize, I tell the young comics, then what the hell good is it?

Stand-up in general is the most raw form of entertainment. There is no pyrotechnics or back-up dancers, it's just live and die by your jokes, that's it.

Everyone's got their own velocity, and there's no real time frame with comedy.

We actually talked about Adam Sandler during the creation of 'Trolls,' because he does know how to time jokes.

When I was in acting class, we did a lot of really serious scenes, and we didn't do comedic scenes. I felt like doing those scenes, it didn't come out of my mouth the right way. I don't know if it's because my voice is different, or what it is about me, but it just seemed a little off.