Marianne Elliott Quotes

I was coerced into taking piano lessons in the early '50s. It was a quite unpleasant experience.

When I was a kid, my dad kind of forced me to sing the third harmony for our little family group, and I just kind of hated it. I just felt so uncomfortable on stage, too shy.

When I was younger, my mother tried to get me an agent because I was always singing and dancing, but whenever she took me to an audition, I would just shut down.

I was 6, and I was in the opera 'Carmen.' My dad sang opera and got me into the children's chorus. I was super fat at the time and didn't make eye contact with anyone. I knew I loved acting ever since.

My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage.

A cricket ball broke my nose when I was a kid so I couldn't breath through it. Before I had it operated on I used to stand on stage with my mouth slightly open.

Dad loves my stuff. No matter how many times my voice cracks or I miss a tap, he doesn't care. He's like some businessman making it to his kid's recital.

I'm one of relatively few stage-trained actors who doesn't much like acting on stage. It feels kind of like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, which I did when I was eight. When it was all over, I was glad I had done it, but most of the time when it was actually happening, I was just kind of hanging on for dear life.

I have a great need for affection from an audience. I don't know whether this is because I had such a tough life when I was a child.

As a kid, I pretty much got nothing but scorn, and occasionally active animus, for writing fantasy and squirreling it away in my closet and, later, under the mattress supports in my bed.

I used to watch people like Richard Burton and Mel Gibson and think, 'I could never do that.'

I just liked the feeling of being on stage.

I was convinced that acting was for fools. I was on the stage when I was eight with my father, he was playing one of those Greek blind guys that sees things and warns people, whilst I was in a blue skirt. I think there were 5,000 people in the theatre, it was ridiculous.

I performed in public for the first time at three years old. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was on a big stage. There were probably three or four hundred people in the audience. We were doing this dance, this Kermit the Frog routine, all of us in our little green leotards.

When I was five or six, I asked to sing at a big family party, and ever since I got up there in front of everyone in my suit - it had a blue collar, like in 'Scarface' - I had the bug.

Honestly, I was only rested in rugby football; all my friends were boys, and I definitely didn't want to go on stage, but I just did it to keep everyone happy. I did some singing, dancing like they liked, but it wasn't my thing at all.

You see, I was never stage-struck the way most girls were.

I remember I always felt much more safe standing up on a chair and singing in front of my mother than I was in front of my father!

I didn't really want to sing at first, but my dad insisted that I do.

I'm most comfortable on stage.

The first job I had was a Pampers commercial. And I used to go with my father whenever he would do a performance. I remember clinging to his legs, saying, 'Please. Take me with you.'

I have the comedian's fear of bottles flying. I've never been bottled off, but I have had things thrown at me. Bag of crisps. And there's still a part of me, when I sit in an audience, that thinks people are going to start heckling the play.

If I hadn't wanted to become a footballer, Dad wouldn't have made me do it.

Growing up, when I'd throw out the trash, I'd toss it and dart because all the cats would come running. That's why I still don't like cats.

I was not happy with myself as a human being when I was very young - I was afraid of people; I was afraid of talking, I didn't know how to express myself other than by being on stage.