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I think that kids need to grow up watching what I grew up watching - great entertainment; you know, Judy Garland and all these musicals that bring song and dance and acting all together in a polished way.
There's something to be said for any boy growing up among lots of other boys who like to play basketball and football, while all I wanted to do was put on musicals. Mentally, I was always in my own world.
So way back, Jonathan and I were - we were entertainers as kids. We were actors; we did theater, musicals; we ended up getting into commercials and some TV spots. Actually, one of our jobs, we were clowns.
I never pursued voice hard enough. I've done musicals here and there, but I was never dedicated to really being one of these fantastic, operatic kind of singers that you have to be in some of these musicals.
We did a lot of high school productions. My first was 'Twelfth Night.' I played Viola. We did 'Much Ado About Nothing' and 'Taming of the Shrew,' and a lot of musicals: 'The Wiz,' 'Bye Bye Birdie,' 'Oliver.'
I was in New York doing musicals in the theater and on Broadway before 'Orange,' so people always ask, 'Are you ever going to get to sing? Does she even sing?' But people who know me know I actually do sing.
Musicals are not something I have had vigorous training in. But it's definitely something that I want to do. I don't like to be afraid of anything. I don't want to feel like there's something that I can't do.
I've auditioned for musicals a lot, but I think my voice didn't really match what they were looking for. I went to school for musical theater for a year and dropped out. Legit musicals are not quite my forte.
American musicals are, for the most part, about boys, or boyish pursuits and aspirations - the fantasy of freedom and resolve - and those dreams have little to do with the reality of most black women's lives.
I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent.
I found acting when I was 14, when I got cast in the chorus in a high school play, 'The Boyfriend.' In my high school, we did mainly musicals, so I just started doing nothing but musicals for years and loved it.
I was very influenced by the musicals and romantic comedies of the 1930s. I admired Gene Harlow and such, which probably explains why, since the end of my marriage, I've dated nothing but a succession of blondes.
They're odd beasts, musicals, but what I like about them is the way they allow windows into people's lives. When people sing, you get an opportunity to see a vulnerability, a glimpse of a life in a messed-up head.
The musicals that I loved, growing up - many, many. 'Singing in the Rain,' of course, is a classic, I love 'Meet Me in St. Louis.' I love 'Funny Face,' Stanley Donen's beautiful movie. It's really countless for me.
I think that of musicals - especially the big, splashy ones - require an actor that's also part cheerleader, too, and that's really tough to do if it's not something that really grabs you and your heart's not in it.
I would love to go into musicals. I got a chance to sing in 'Big Momma's House,' and that's something I would love to do more. But only in Broadway or in the movies. I don't think I would ever seek a career as a singer.
It's nice to establish yourself as an actor first and a singer second. Proof is such a tremendous piece of work, and I'm incredibly lucky to be a part of it. I'm sure that the musicals will happen in the future, though.
I think I'm a straight actor who occasionally does musicals; most people think I'm an eccentric comedian. It's amazing how many years you can spend in this business just sorting out something as simple and basic as that.
The biggest myth I'd like to bust isn't about me - it's about musicals. So many people dismiss the entire art form through highbrow snobbery, but I think a lot of those people would be suprised if they actually saw some.
I always had an eye toward the stage for the story of Hamilton's life, but I began with the idea of a concept album, the way Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' were albums before they were musicals.
I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.
I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.
I saw some musicals at dinner theaters where I grew up. But I didn't go to a big theater to see one until probably after I graduated from high school when I took myself to see 'Tommy' when it was on tour. I absolutely loved it.
Musicals are written in English, and then we import them to Japan. When we translate them into Japanese, the sounds of the language are completely different. The Japanese language is not the best for singing, in terms of sound.
I love musicals, but I find it's just so deadening. You know, 30 takes, you do a little piece here and a little piece there. There's hours and hours of waiting. And to me, that's as far away from real performance as you can get.
You have to understand the medium you're writing for. People jump into writing musicals without realizing how complicated they are. Knowing one form doesn't necessarily mean you know the other. You have to be comfortable with it.
While many of my musicals deal with big themes and ideas, I don't intentionally go looking to write shows like that. A story will interest me, and then somewhere along the way, I discover that hidden inside are these epic themes.
'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' was my favorite for me to be in because it was all dancing. There were other musicals that I made with Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly that were wonderful pictures, and we had a lot of fun making them.
It wasn't until high school that I actually started writing. I was in a lot of the school plays and musicals, and there was a lot of down time during rehearsals. I would go into the orchestra pit and mess around on the grand piano.
I'm doing 'Les Miserables,' the movie. I've done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I've been like, 'Come on, let's do a movie/musical.'
I've been a performer for a long time, but I really don't have any dancing experience. I did some of the musicals in high school, and I was in the glee club for a little while just to try and gain some skills... I was not good at it.
There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy.
I didn't really start going to see a lot of musicals and live theater probably until I was in seventh or eighth grade, maybe my first year of high school, and by that time I'd probably seen 'Grease' twice a year every year of my life.
I started singing in church and I was probably around seven and I started singing anywhere that I could. I used to sing at my school. I was in musicals and then it kind of got to a point where I started to - wanted to do my own songs.
I always loved soul music. My dad was a very religious guy, and we would listen to a lot of gospel and soul music. My college girlfriend introduced me to musicals. She listened to them, so that was the first time I heard 'Dream Girls.'
When I was in college, I started an improv group, and I did a bunch of plays and some musicals. I have a theater degree. I'm a school person: I like getting homework and having deadlines. When I graduated, I worked right away as an actor.
I was obsessed with X-Men as a kid, and I would have to go and play every last one of them. My sister was obsessed with Barbies. So we would create these X-Men-Barbie combos and perform weird musicals where they interacted with each other.
When you're young, you want to make every kind of film: musicals, Westerns, horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small, personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.
When musicals don't work, they really don't work. But when they work, and someone is singing because they can't speak anymore, or they're dancing because they can't move anymore, moving is not enough to express - it's this beautiful thing.
I think you should make more movies, more musicals. I think the public deserves that. I think this country deserves to be able to get out and foster that talent. Give them an opportunity to become stars. I think the whole idea is wonderful.
When you're on tour with the band, it's a different mentality. You don't sightsee because you're making sure you can do the show. But in musicals, I don't have to sing or play: I just have to use my brain, and the rest of the time, I'm free.
I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Sound of Music,' and my mum's an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn't find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.
Certainly, I've loved musicals for a while, so I did some short films in college that had musical numbers and things like that, so I've kind of been obsessed with Fred and Ginger and Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen and Jaques Demy forever.
I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them - the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world.
I wasn't that great in sports. I started doing children's theater and loved it. I thought I had a great thing going with musicals. I thought, 'I can do this. It's fun.' I wanted to go for it, and I thought I'd like to make a living doing this.
I've had so many experiences with film or musicals or books where I just walk away changed in some way. One of the things that makes me want to be a writer is to pour my heart into something and hope that I can affect someone in that same way.
I do know one thing: I wish people were doing more dangerous musicals, more courageous musicals and not just falling into the trap of trying to figure out what the public wants, because you find out that the public very often wants what's good.
When I was young and growing up in New York, my parents took me to children's theater quite often - elaborate presentations of 'Goldilocks' and 'Rapunzel' for Upper East Side kids. As I grew older, they took me to adult theater, mostly musicals.
It rests in the hands of 'Dreamgirls' and 'Hairspray.' If they're successful, we'll be back on track - people will continue to greenlight musicals. If they don't work, then you're going to see everyone go back to the way it was before 'Chicago.'
I love fantasy. I love horror. I love musicals. Whatever doesn't really happen in life is what I'm interested in. As a way of commenting on everything that does happen in life, because ultimately the only thing I'm really interested in is people.