Colin Firth Quotes

Before doing stand-up, I thought acting was easy - it's not easy. It's a hard life. It's easy in its own way, you just stand there and talk. But there is a difference between people who can do it well and people who can't.

Having to stand in front of an audience and have it be your job to make them laugh, you can't really look to anyone but yourself. It's what you wrote, what you said and how you said it, so it's kind of terrifying, but I liked it. When it goes well, it's the best feeling in the world. When it doesn't go well, it's the worst feeling, but once you get into the rhythm of it, I think it's really fun.

It's depressing sitting at a comedy club all night, waiting to get on to do your five or ten minutes of material.

People always talk about the content, in terms of the politics of it or whatever social issues are in it, and it's like, "Yeah, but I'm also a good comic." You could at least talk about the form of it, and I feel like that's always the thing that's missed.

I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.

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.

I remember thinking as I was doing the jokes for the first time, "If I can hear that very clearly, I'm not hearing laughter." It just became deafening, this buzzing noise. I mean, it was brutal. It was really terrible. Then I remember thinking, "At least nobody important, or anyone who I really respect, saw that." And then literally right when I went off the stage, Jerry Seinfeld got up and went on. So I was like, "Oh great. Seinfeld saw me bomb." On the other hand, I thought, "At least no one will be thinking of me anymore. They'll just be focusing on him."

There is nothing - nothing - like writing a great joke and having that joke kill onstage.

I don't really do stand-up.

There's nothing like the freedom of being in a roomful of strangers and trying to make them laugh... You either sink or swim. It's like verbal boxing.

[sam] Kinison, when he started out, he'd come to Canada when I was first starting, and he'd always [bomb].

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough.

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.

Going before an audience of people who expect you to be funny is tough. Going before an audience that expect you to be boring, and then being a little funny, is much easier. I prefer easier.

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.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

I always hate telling my jokes in print 'cause I always feel like it reads so not funny and people read it and they think, 'Oh, so that's what that guy does in his stand-up? That's terrible.'

I was the class clown, but I was a reluctant class clown because I was always and still am somewhat embarrassed by performing. I have terrible stage fright, and I don't like being in front of people.

There are two types of actors. There's the actors who can acknowledge that they could never do standup comedy. Then there's the pretentious ones, who believe that acting is harder than standup comedy. I definitely don't think it is. I also think making a comedy is substantially harder than making a drama.

Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

There was something about that form of comedy that's just difficult. It never really felt like you could just fully commit to all the colors that you carry with you.

It's an unknown quantity. It's actually almost a cliché to say it, how hard comedy is. What's that famous quote? "Dying is easy, comedy's hard." I think the broader it gets, if you miss by a millimetre, you've missed completely. It's a very hard thing to do.

At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn't have something to say on a nightly basis.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

When you're a comic, it's like being born gay. It's what you want to do every night when your other friends are out at night going to parties.