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My favourite comedian, of course, is Tim Conway. He has a way about him - being that belly-laugh kind of funny, and he has the improvisational skills, too. I've never seen anybody better.
The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing.
I had a moment where I was onstage once... As a comedian, you just think, 'Be funny as possible all the time - like, funny at all costs - jokes, jokes, jokes.' That's how my mentality was.
Comedians are the most challenging people for me to shoot. Because you're not actually in the dialogue with them, they are performing. When I work with a comedian, I become their audience.
The thing is, I was never really a comedian - a comedian would scoff at the notion of me as a comedian because I've never done anything, really. I've always just been some guy who's funny.
You know, I'm a comedian the same as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. We all came up the same way. The three of us have interest in politics; I call us fundits, we're fundits! We're not pundits!
I didn't tell any of my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was superstitious. I thought if I told people, it wouldn't happen. So I kept it all in my head for years and years.
I know that if any other comedian came up to me questioning something I did or said, it would be literally settled in a heartbeat. I love comedy. I give to comedy. I don't take from comedy.
I have immigrant, African parents. They would say, in their Nigerian accents, 'So you want to be a jester?' And I was like, 'I don't want to be a court jester, Ma. I want to be a comedian.'
When you're a comedian, and you show up on set to a job where you're not writing, and you get handed material that's as good as we do on 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine,' you just feel lucky every day.
I'm a comedian and there are a lot of things I'm still learning. I love one liners because I love smart jokes. I also don't like complaining about society or whining about my life on stage.
Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that. I've been a producer and led people. Also, being a comedian, you're under pressure.
I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'
Sometimes, as a comedian, a line will come to you, that is so beautiful, so perfect, that you think: I did not create this line. This line belongs to all of us. Surely this is a line of God.
Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.
Being comedian outside of performing, you're someone who's analyzing life, and thinking about it, and observing so much. In my opinion, it can make you feel sort of on the outside looking in.
The connection between someone in Leeds and a comedian in Los Angeles would probably never happen if it weren't for MySpace, so it enables friendship and connection far more than it limits it.
For generations comedians have made jokes about Scots-Irish in the South inter-breeding. "I am my own grandpa" and all that stuff; you know, because they all were marrying their first cousins.
I just had a throwaway part, really, if you think about it. I'm not a natural actor, you know? I'm a comedian, through and through. And I really love my lines. Those are the lines I want to do.
No matter how big a comedian gets, they're ultimately all just a bunch of nerds with their weird insecurities. You realize these are just the people in high school who were making people laugh.
I don't think I'd want to be a comedian today if I saw it on the telly. I wouldn't think it was a thing for weirdoes and drop-outs; I'd think it was a thing for squares who wanted to be famous.
I'm very much a stand-up comedian in my heart. That's really what I do. Now I'm trying to incorporate all of the different elements of my work as a performer, and use it as a stand-up comedian.
It never dawned on me that I had the option of becoming a comedian. I come from a little dirt street town in northwest Texas, and they really don't talk about the arts there much on career day.
Magicians are definitely more arrogant. They're kind of like "Abra Kadabra, you're an idiot," they don't let you in on the joke. Comedians, you're always in on the joke unless it's Andy Kaufman.
The only time I get sick of making people laugh is when I'm in a non-writing-joke mode, and I just can't seem to come up with anything new that's funny. That's a tough place to be as a comedian.
Sometimes I liken the comedian's lifestyle a little bit to a firefighter's in the sense that there's a lot of waiting and a lot of nothingness. And then there are moments of urgent firefighting.
I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.
I admire Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. I like a lot of comedians. I like Cameron Diaz - she's funny and has a very light spirit. That's quite rare nowadays. There are many actresses I admire.
John was the smartest and most amazing comedian I've ever worked with. I think more than teaching me about acting or comedy, he taught me about life and the love of people and respect of people.
When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners.
I knew that drinking and doing stand-up was going to make me less of an effective comedian. And I just had a lot invested in wanting to be a really good comedian and so I stopped for that reason.
I don't mind being accused of being a bad comedian and I don't even mind being accused of being a bad talk-show host, but I never want to be accused of being an arrogant, pompous showbiz asshole.
If I was a young man, I might have bypassed the whole comedian-actor thing and just been a filmmaker. Then I'd probably have spent my whole life going, 'I wonder if I could have been a comedian.'
I think politicians and comedians have a lot in common. One is a group of approval-seeking narcissists who will say and do anything to be liked... and comedians are always talking about politics.
It doesn't bother me that I'm not a household word on the East Coast. Baton Rouge, Raleigh, Minneapolis - I'm so popular in these cities where you've never imagined an East Coast comedian working.
I was immediately into all the great movie comedians - Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder. Everything those guys had anything to do with, from I don't know how young. Super young.
The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.
Phyllis Diller came through a mine field of male comedians when she arrived on the comedy scene and she defused them all. She won her place in the Hall of Comedy as the First Lady. I will miss her.
I always focused on being an actor. I did stand-up briefly, but I also did a lot of dramatic work. But since I've been on 'The Daily Show,' people think I'm a comedian. That's not how I see myself.
In my first stand-up acts there wasn't material even. You know, I'd go on stage and cry and read a Dear John letter or gut fish on stage. I could be odd - and it's what interested me as a comedian.
A lot of comedians, when they have a bad gig, will blame everything but themselves. They'll blame the crowd, or the room was wrong, it had a weird vibe, or the promoter promoted a weird atmosphere.
I'm not a comedian. I can play off of people, but I'm not that guy. I don't want people being like, 'Yeah, he should have stuck with drama.' It would not be my choice to have critics mumbling that.
I just think of myself as a comedian, really. I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It's funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I'm not religious at all. I have no religion.
Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.
I always wanted to be a comedian and actor. I basically stumbled into the music medium, though. I'm OK, but that's about it. I like to think I'm good enough not to negatively affect the performance.
People expect comedy from me but I am not just a stand-up comedian anymore. I act on stage, host 'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa' and also conduct interviews on my show. I have grown as a person and an artiste.
I thought I better warn you that I am not one of those politically correct comedians, but it turns out that also I'm not really that racist, homophobic or woman hating either, so you might not notice
My younger sister's a comedian. She has a sketch comedy group in Chicago called Schadenfreude and I look at her with such admiration and envy because it's such an amazing thing to make someone laugh.
If you watch most of the stuff on TV and in movies, it's usually put-down humor. It's like somebody being mean or cynical or thoughtless to another person. I never wanted to be that type of comedian.
Chevy Chase and Bill Murray - we thought those guys were funny. We love Bill Murray, but we didn't think they were right for Airplane! because it would step on the joke if there was a known comedian.