Noel Coward Quotes

It's hard to go back and be constantly funny.

Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.

Some actors try to play parts and do things they can't do. Being funny is one of them. Being funny's hard.

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it's my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

I'd never been in play long enough for the flowers to die in the dressing room.

Not everyone can be as successful a performer as myself, who gave 10 great performances the first time I ever did comedy, and then toiled in obscurity for years.

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off. You either have timing or you don't, and that's something I don't have for sure.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

Actually, I think I'm funnier off-camera.

The camera lens or the television camera is still just a proscenium arch. And as a great old character actor once said to me, wherever you're acting, you reach up and take hold of the proscenium arch, and you pull it down around your shoulders.

Comedy. I think that's something I'd really like to do.

Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'

If you are doing stand-up comedy, you have to be confident in what you are doing. That doesn't mean just because you are confident you are funny.

A comedian's body is funny as well as his mind being funny, his whole personage is funny.

You'll never see a good performance out of me, in terms of a character, when the camera isn't rolling.

The number one rule of comedy acting is 'don't try to be funny.' Act as seriously as possible.

Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.'

With comedy, don't try to be funny. That's really helped me. Just say the lines as you would say them, interact with other characters, and try to make it as real as possible. It will come out funny.

I love the studio audience. That's where I feel the most at home. You know right away if you're being funny or not.

Loads of blokes think they're funny, but it counts for nothing unless you get up and have a go.

The Ramones were not about having a good time. The closest thing probably was maybe Joey and Dee Dee might have had some good times, but it was almost like a work ethic. We were out there to basically to get the fans to see the Ramones.

I think Carmen Christopher is going to be massively huge. He's just too funny. He's got funny in his bones, and he wants to conquer every room.

I have always wanted to do comedy.