Performing Career Quotes

I've twice been on the point of giving up my performing career to train for the priesthood.

I always assumed I'd spend my life happily performing in artsy-fartsy little theaters.

I was a dancer from about the age of four, so I was always performing and forcing my parents to watch my brother and I do 'Jesus Christ Super Star' in the living room. My first step was community theater, and then I started to do films.

There are definitely people who are stuck in the '60s and there are definitely people who think I am and it's just not true. I was performing for a long time before the '60s and I'll be doing exciting interesting things for along time to come.

In all my years of performing, no audience member has ever actually assaulted me. I consider this to be the singular triumph of my performing career.

I went from someone who really wanted to perform from a really young age - that was all I knew - to going on 'X-Factor', which I thought was going to be the most incredible experience ever and it becoming the worst experience of my life.

You bet I arrived overnight. Over a few hundred nights in the Catskills, in vaudeville, in clubs and on Broadway.

I was an opening act for 10 years.

I worked with my parents on the stage in production numbers since I was 4, but I never really gave much thought to being a performer on my own until I was 12 or 13.

I didn't really start performing until high school. My whole family is actually in the business, and started in the business in Chicago, so I was going to shows when I was a teeny-tiny kid, but I didn't really start performing until high school.

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.

And as long as people want to hear me sing, I don't know why I'd retire.

When I look back at what musical theatre music and show music meant to me, first of all - more than anything - what it meant to me was work. As I was growing up, I realized that singing and performing was my strong suit.

Do you know how many concerts I've done in my whole life, in more than 35 years of performing? Sixty-four.

So I'm in my 51st year of playin' mostly nightclubs. I do some concerts.

I have written before, but I was primarily an actor and improvisational performer.

I started at home as a kid putting on shows and lip-syncing Michael Jackson for the grown-ups. Then, in musicals and plays in school. At 17, I was performing in coffee shops and in parking lots at Phish shows. At 18, I had a band that played local shows in the Northwest.

My first professional job was actually at a place called Opryland U.S.A., which no longer exists, but I've been performing since I was a kid.

I was 17 when I auditioned for 'Miss Saigon.' I really grew up doing that show. I pretty much knew, almost a year into 'Miss Saigon,' that I was going to be a performer, that I was going to be singing and acting.

The day I feel like I'm at an office job is the day I'll quit performing in front of a camera.

When you become a professional, there is all this other stuff you have to do. That part is the job, capital J-O-B. They're very different things, but they're all part of the same career. Once you get onstage and you get to perform, that's your reward for doing your job.

In college, I pretty much abandoned music and started performing with the school's improv and sketch troupe, and at some point, that became my permanent thing.

I wanted so badly to have a backup plan for when I'm not performing anymore. Let's be realistic: it's not going to be like this forever.

I was ballet dancing at four, playing piano by six, and doing commercials by 12. When I was 21, I was on the number one live comedy show in Puerto Rico. I told my parents, 'I'm going to New York to become a performer.' And I left.