Right out of school, I did this show called 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.' It is based on a classical text with new music - not necessarily confined by a certain genre. It was a diverse, interesting group of musicians, actors, nonactors, and singers all creating this thing that is bigger than all of us.
Watching Bernadette Peters perform is like an acting class. She's amazing.
I never planned to become an actor.
I'm a different guy on stage.
I majored in theater. I did plays. But musicals were not my thing.
When I first started acting, I was just crap.
Broadway was weird.
I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'
I'm sure with a production that's not particularly well received or mediocrely received, it must be incredibly challenging to get up and keep doing it.
'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.
I love working in New York theater.
If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.
In 1954 I was on Broadway for five months in 'The Matchmaker' and went once a week to the classes of Uta Hagen, a theatrical guru whose teaching in retrospect illuminated the whole of my training at the Old Vic.
Well, it's really gratifying to me to have a stage and some bright lights and a microphone. They're tools and opportunities, and to be able to just pull somebody up on stage with me and point at them is a great feeling.
I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture.
People like the shows I do. I want to be real, to have fun, even when I dance on stage... it's a buzz.
In television, a sitcom is probably the closest thing to what it's like working in the theater.
I think the first role I ever played was Mr. Bumble in a production of 'Oliver.'
The most rewarding thing is being on Broadway. I went into Cabaret as a replacement and was really challenged beyond anything I could have imagined.
In school productions, I was always villager No. 7. I was never at the front of the stage dancing and never had any lines.
I'll keep going until I get to the point where I can't get out on stage.
When I was in 'Billy,' I always knew that I wanted to do something in performing. I always knew that I wanted to have a future in the performing arts. I had no idea that it was going to be acting in movies.
I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals.
I spent a whole year in 'Spamalot' and didn't have one drop of alcohol.
From the time I was five years old, theater was all I knew. I did community theater; I went to theater school. It's like going to the gym as an actor: every single night, you have to recreate the illusion of the first time, so you really have to listen and connect and stay in the moment for an hour and a half - with no breaks.
