Barry Humphries Quotes

Me personally, I want to entertain people above all. When you look back at burlesque in history and the real golden age of burlesque, those entertainers were there to entertain, and there wasn't usually some big political message behind what they were doing.

The Marx Brothers isn't subtle, and that's hilarious.

I realized women and humor were linked very closely.

'Married with Children' was racy. It was sexist. It was a lot of things, but mostly it was funny.

When I played Imunique on 'Love That Girl,' that was on the other side of comedy - loud and out there.

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

One of the greatest compliments you can ever get is when you make fun of a certain sect of people and they are laughing the hardest. When we did 'Men on Film' on 'In Living Color,' gay men wrote in how much they loved it.

The female characters in 'Peep Show' are not 'strong': they are idiots. As idiotic as the men.

Make no mistake: I love women. I'm married to one, I was birthed by one, and I played one in my high school production of 'Romeo and Juliet.' No one else could fit into the bodice.

I'm usually cast by people who are oddly goofy.

In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.

To play the leading man in a 'Three Stooges' movie, you've got to think funny. Thank God I think funny.

I know I was influenced by Beatrice Lillie. I must have been.

I've usually had two styles: the Fletch character and the Clark Griswold character.

I'm not an impressionist, per se, but if you do any kind of comedy - and they ask you to do that, most of the time - there's some degree of appreciation, I think, involving somebody you like.

I love playing a smart person and not that blonde deadpan.

Since there have been men and women, there have been funny women.

The funniest people are usually the best actors, I believe.

Drama is easy. Comedy's hard.

Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it.

In 2004 I had the fortune - or the misfortune - of playing John Kerry. It was hard because I think the best impressions exaggerate someone's most well-known quality. And exaggerating gravitas is very hard to pull off.

People like Bill Murray are incredible at what they do and are definitely my flavour. Although Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais are also incredible actors. In their comedy, they make these stupid people feel so real. These guys are really setting the bar very high, and I learn as much from them about acting as I do about comedy.

I love how much people are drawn to my 'impersonations' of Trump because they aren't really impersonations at all. I'm not trying to be Trump so much as I'm trying to make Trump me. In doing them, I simply ask myself, 'How would I, Sarah Cooper, say these words?'

It's an old joke: All evil people in movies are British.

We were called 'Three Men Who, When Standing Side by Side, Have a Wingspan of Over Twelve Feet.' We had that name for a week or so. We were also called 'Are You My Mother?' for awhile. We went through a lot of really dumb band names - almost as dumb as Fountains of Wayne.