Taye Diggs Quotes

When my brother and me got into performing in the late '40s and early '50s, it was a sensational opportunity to learn from our elders. Every show we played had a dancer, a comic, a juggler, a singer, an acrobat. I came to appreciate virtuosity in all forms of the business.

I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.

There's been periods of broadcasts in the past where you could see all ages of entertainers, ranging from George Burns to Shirley Temple. That's not the condition now.

There were a great many in vaudeville - people who never quite came through. But they had their place, and they filled it. They kept theatres open. Those pan-timers, those interstate-timers, those four-a-dayers, those six-a-dayers - they were an integral part of that endearing merry-go-round called vaudeville.

Well, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades in show business for a long time. I was a singer and a dancer and then I got a job as an actor.

So many people are working in vaudeville today that I looked for three weeks to book enough acts for an hour bill and didn't have them until the night before we opened in Buffalo and money was no object!

I've been in show business for 50, no, 60 years. I was approached in school to join a variety act.

You look at Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Bob Seger. All they ever wanted to do was go out there and entertain, and I'm the same way.

When my dad, Tommy Tucker Kelly, was about six, he started out with his dad on 'The Black and White Minstrel' Shows.

I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades in show business for a long time. I was a singer and a dancer, and then I got a job as an actor.

I started performing in 1950 at the age of 16 when I joined the Burton Lester's Midgets as a performer. Shortly after, I became a DJ with Mecca Organization before joining Billy Smart's Circus as a clown and shadow Ringmaster.

When I was starting out in this business, that was the norm. You did it all. You looked around, and entertainers could dance, sing, play the piano, act, make you laugh.

My parents were in Vaudeville, in musical. And I would tour with them and had a couple of wonderfully lucky breaks in England.

I want to be one of those old-fashioned entertainers.

My great-grandfather was a variety hall comedian called Billy Mack.

I used to do cabaret as a kid and always wanted to pick it up again.

Jennifer Lopez and Sara Bareilles are my tops! Both incredibly hard-working and talented women.

I don't think of myself of a late-show host any more than I think of myself of a game-show host. I mean, I've done both, I've been an actor. I'm just kind of a carny, that's it.

I've always slightly regretted not taking up Chicago.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

I'm not a performer. If they're looking for entertainer-in-chief, I'm probably not the guy.

Look, I come from vaudeville, I come from burlesque, I come from heartaches, I come from sadness, I come from gladness, I come from work and sweat and respect for the craft.

The world's a stage, & everything else is Vaudeville.

I was always a natural performer. It was easy for me. I danced and I sang, and all that stuff. I felt like I'd be something in the arts, but it vacillated between being a dancer and a singer, or whatever.

I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything.