Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I would say 'Looking' and 'Spring Awakening' are the most important and personal projects I've ever been apart of.
My first film that I got right after 'Spring Awakening' was called 'Taking Woodstock,' and Ang Lee was the director.
If I were to be back on Glee, I would like to spend some time with Lea Michele because I love her and we go way back.
We didn't have a glee club at my school. It depends on what area of the States you're from. It's more in the Midwest.
Just follow your joy. Always. I think that if you do that, life will take you on the course that it's meant to take you.
I'd moved to New York to pursue a career in theatre, and it's very practical how you do it - I just went to every open call going.
Dating can be painful, can be great, can be confusing, can be weird, but I don't do it online because I'm not really an online person.
Some people have the gift where they can just sing. I don't have the fail-safe voice, so it has to be something that I need to sing about.
I can't think of a better bonding experience than to be able to sit on stage and to watch your fellow performers perform on stage every night.
Whenever you get into a new environment, it's scary. You don't know the people; you're not really comfortable with the machine that the show is.
I went to a local high school in Lancaster. Not much I can say about it; it was pretty much your typical public high school back in Pennsylvania.
I did 'How to Succeed in Business... ,' 'Kiss Me Kate,' 'Godspell,' and 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown' in high school, all of which were fun.
I was Mary Poppins for Halloween when I was 3, with lipstick and a carpetbag. And I was Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' in a production in my dad's barn.
After 'Spring Awakening,' I wanted to do things that are really challenging and outside my comfort zone: things that scare me a little and make me grow.
I am such a huge fan of both of those shows - I've seen every episode of 'Sex in the City' and every episode of 'Girls' at least once, some multiple times.
I loved traditional musical comedy. That was my passion. Then 'Spring Awakening' happened, and it took that rock n' roll and pop music to change gears for me.
It's daunting, taking on the task of representing the gay community, because there are so many different facets and different schools of thought and behavior.
'Looking' is more than just a television show. It's contributing to the cultural conversation, and for me, those are the most exciting projects to be a part of.
Make sure that you always follow your heart and your gut, and let yourself be who you want to be, and who you know you are. And don't let anyone steal your joy.
When I was 20 years old, I got cast in 'Spring Awakening' and got swept up in this experience where it was kind of tunnel vision. We were working - it was nonstop.
In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act and you're in the audience
In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film, it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act, and you're in the audience.
I'm kind of whatever about nudity. Hopefully I wouldn't be a part of anything, whether I'm naked or not, that I didn't believe in. But I'm pretty comfortable being naked.
'Spring Awakening' was a discovery for all involved. None of us will ever have that specific sense of revelation in the same way - that is probably the thing I miss the most.
I'd always done musicals, and so living in the world of straight plays and working with off-Broadway actors and living in that community was a completely life-changing experience.
It's so awesome to be a part of something that is successful not because there's a famous person in it or because it's a revival of something, but because it's so fresh and original.
Don't let the world define you. In the world of acting, and I think in any profession, really, people are really eager to put you in a box and categorize you as one particular thing.
It's one thing to experience your Broadway debut alone, but to share it with an entire company was like summer camp or a college experience, where you were really growing up together.
I think about 'Will & Grace,' and I think about 'Modern Family,' and the way that being gay has become sort of middle America... in the way that they show gay people in their specific way.
While I was in high school, I saw Sutton Foster in 'Thoroughly Modern Millie,' and she was the one that was most inspiring to me for sure. I saw 'Millie' 6 times in a span of two years or so.
I bought the VHS of 'Into the Woods' at the Suncoast in the Park City Mall and watched it in the basement when I got home. And when it was over, I rewound it and immediately watched it again.
When I was doing 'Spring Awakening' the first couple of years I was living in New York, I was gay, and I was living with my 'roommate,' who was my boyfriend but was my roommate to everyone else.
The first job I got was a production of 'Fame - the Musical,' at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts, and it got me my Equity card, too. I waited 12 hours to be seen for it, though!
When you get to really involve yourself with a piece and the other people, and you get to feel like it's a community and you're all building something together, it helps me to produce better work, I think.
The word 'improv' always makes me feel a little anxious because I always feel like we'll have to pull props out of a bag and find 800 different ways to talk about a stick, the way you do in theater school.
People create from different places. Some love to create from a tortured place, some from a joyful place. And when I feel like I'm a 5-year-old kid in my backyard playing pretend, that's when I'm happiest.
For me, there's nothing more valuable as an actor, or better way to learn, than getting to perform in front of a live audience, no matter where you are. Whether it's on Broadway, in Florida, or doing a tour.
I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, watching the Tony Awards on TV. Not just 'watching' the Tony Awards on TV - I would record them on a VHS tape and bring them in to school and show them to the other kids.
I left 'Spring Awakening,' and within a month of leaving the show, I came out to my parents and to my friends and broke up with my boyfriend and moved into an apartment of my own and completely changed my life.
As a kid growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, all I wanted to do was be on Broadway in a musical. 'Spring Awakening' kind of answered all of my questions and fulfilled all of my dreams - beyond my wildest dreams.
I think the first Broadway show that I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' and that was in 5th or 6th grade. Our school would take bus trips up to see shows, and so it was on one of their bus trips that I got to see 'Beauty and the Beast.'
I feel like certainly there are people expecting 'Looking' to be representative of everyone that's gay, the entire gay community. And it's a dangerous expectation to come in watching the show expecting that. Expecting that out of any show.
I sort of have the belief that you work being your character out while you're working on it, or that's been my experience so far. I throw myself into it 100% and try to live in that world, and then when it's over, just sort of be able to leave it behind.
I ended up doing three very complicated off-Broadway plays that, in certain ways, were not successes in that they were received in a complicated way. But for me they were successes because they forced me to act without singing, which I'd never done before.
The difference between being in the closet and out of the closet as a gay man is such a huge shift. I feel so connected still to that 22-year-old, but the idea that I was not open with that part of my life - which I am now so open about - is sort of surreal.
In theater, you're in charge of your performance, and at the end of the day you're the one who gets credit because you're in front of the audience doing it, and in film and TV it's the director who gets to decide when to cut to you on a line, which take he uses.
I taught a class about the Tony Awards at a summer theater camp the year after I graduated from high school. So, the first time I was nominated for 'Spring Awakening,' it felt like a surreal dream: it was every childhood dream I had come true. It felt like a fairy tale.
I was definitely planning to go to college, but I deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon to be in a non-equity tour of 'The Sound of Music.' But I made very little money in the tour, and college is really expensive, and I thought I'd never be able to pay off those loans.
My mother's side of the family is Methodist, which is how I was raised. It was conservative in that I had strong values - sitting down and eating with the family every day, listening to authority and going to church every week and having perfect attendance at Sunday school.
I loved 'Weekend,' and it meant a lot to me when I saw it in the movie theater. I think 'Looking' feels more like that movie than any of those other shows, with a little more comedy thrown in than 'Weekend.' But it's certainly got the vibe and look and feeling of that movie.