Kelli O'Hara Quotes

I love acting because it's empowering. It empowers me.

I'm on fire when I'm singing, I'm completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It's a very special thing.

Acting is a very important thing for me, and I love doing it. But when I'm acting, I spend 14 hours a day and months a time being someone else. When I'm singing, I just get to be me.

There are a lot of different facets to my personality that I don't use all the time in my house, or in everyday life, that I can experience and share when I'm on a stage.

When I'm on stage I become a different beast.

For me, 'Rent' was all about coming out of myself, finding out who I was, learning the power I could have as a performer.

Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself.

I was Aladdin, and then I was Captain Von Trapp from 'Sound Of Music' when I was 7 or 8, and then King Arthur. I was always the lead. I've always enjoyed being onstage, acting obnoxious, being someone that wasn't me, hiding behind a character.

I know acting is not impersonating, but I'm good with impressions. I can do impressions of people I know, and people I've been, and roles that I've acted before.

I love to act and put on a show, but you're playing a character all the time. For music, it's really just me being myself.

They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy.

I knew I could never be an actor as a man. It just doesn't work, you know? And so when I was doing drag, I realized I could do that kind of stuff, and then when I was transitioning, I kind of gave up on the whole thing because I didn't think that this time would ever come, you know?

The wonderful thing about acting is that you can use all of your talents and interests in your work.

The muscles you flex in theater are muscles that you really need. I must always find a way to get back there. It's irreplaceable.

On stage, you can use your emotions. It's the place where you can channel them. They have a purpose.

I play grizzlys, but I'm not a grizzly. I'm a song-and-dance man.

Acting is what I do with who I am.

Acting and performing is part of who I am.

Unlike films, theatre allows you to experiment as an actor, which is fulfilling.

Everything evolves naturally in life. It's not limited to beauty or music. The more experience you get, the more you find out about yourself. Everything becomes more and more an expression of the real you. I can play different characters. Sometimes I feel tomboy or glam or playful. When you perform, you can convey emotions differently, and your look can reflect each of those emotions.

I think the beautiful thing about acting is you don't really know who you are. You're able to be whatever you want any day during the week.

My parents thought, 'Oh, my God! What's wrong with him? He's possessed or something.' All of a sudden, I stood up and started saying my lines. From then on, that was it. I knew there was something special about the theater for me, something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.

As an actor, there was that freedom of not having to worry about lights or marks or other people. It was just going out there and having fun with the character.

I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work.

It's a real leveller, you know, to do theatre at least once every two years.