Olivia Culpo Quotes

My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and maybe that's the reason I chose drama - to build a bit of self-confidence. I had a great teacher, and I won a few speech and drama competitions and just fell in love with it.

I didn't act professionally before going to drama school. I don't know if I had the confidence. I didn't think I'd get in when I first auditioned for drama school, and then I did.

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn't good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

I've realized that I can do performances.

The more you perform and get out there, I guess the more practice you have at it and the better you are and the more comfortable you are on stage.

I think it's really, really good for me to be on stage once a year. It keeps your chops good. There's nothing else like it.

As an actor, I've grown considerably. For example, it's taken me years to get comfortable doing a romantic scene and dancing on stage in front of a live audience. I do it a lot better than I ever did. I've really opened up a lot. And I'm glad I have because I'm being appreciated for it.

In high school, my first thing ever was I played Tony in 'West Side Story' when I was about 17. I was a really shy kid, and I just, like, forced myself to learn how to sing this one month because I loved 'West Side Story' so much, and I somehow managed to get the role.

I've never been onstage in my life.

Practicing going over scenes and in front of the camera just to see how that feels, and then ultimately just finding a way to expose yourself to people. That's what I did.

After I found that I had become an actor, slightly to my surprise, I did have some insecurity, and I did take some rather strange acting classes at a place called The Actor's Studio in London. I don't think they did me any good at all.

It took many years of acting classes to get even remotely comfortable, but that's OK. It helped me so much on a personal level, not to mention professionally.

I think I'm getting more and more experience playing on big stages, and I think that's going to help me with everything.

'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa' has helped me shed my inhibitions. Dancing in front of an audience was not easy for me. But I managed it and got progressively comfortable with the audience as the weeks progressed.

Before I started touring, I worked with someone to help me, even physically, because I was so shy. And you can't be shy going onstage. So I had to push myself in a direction that wasn't myself.

For me, being onstage for an hour and a half, my confidence was really huge for me. Doing eight shows a week for a run, I was like: "I'm actually doing this." And now I feel more confident going into something.

I've done second leads in movies, I've done really small roles, too. Other actors never bother me, I believe I'm decent enough to make my own place.

I'm not a natural performer: I have a natural stage fright.

I was really a very ambitious young girl when I started studying drama and performing art.

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be on stage.

Theatre has been a sort of hobby. I regret that I am not active, but given my job that is difficult. But those were learning days. The learning curve was the level of confidence, maturity, and reflexes that theatre teaches you is fantastic. You are alone in front of an audience for two hours and that gives you a different kind of confidence.

I discovered that I love being on stage in high school.

If I could borrow anything from Miley, it would be her stage confidence. For me, that's just going to come with time.

I would love to do stuff on camera. That's what I want to do. It took me a really long time to feel confident as an actor. I think, also, because there's a weird stigma about musical theater where we treat the men who do musical theater differently than we treat the women in musical theater.

I have Janicza solely to thank for my growth as an actor because she saw in me something that other people just weren't seeing, and she knew that I could go beyond the normal, funny 'make-em-ups' that I was doing on an improv stage.