Quotes from Jessie Mueller

I watch Renee Fleming a lot. I listen to Renee Fleming a lot. She was like my built-in master class.

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.

Some of the best actors think they're terrible; that's what keeps you connected to a vulnerability that makes it possible for people to empathize with you.

My first professional gig was 'Once Upon a Mattress' at the Drury Lane Oakbrook... I was in the ensemble. I was one of the ladies in waiting, and I covered Winnifred.

I always thought moving to New York would mean starting over in theater, because I had great work in Chicago and didn't want to become a waitress here.

I'm a sucker for a good country song.

My reason for leaving 'Beautiful', because I had such an amazing time on that show, was by the time I left, I had been doing the show for almost two years. I was a little burnt out.

I loved being in Cambridge. I think about it often. It was this great little capsule of time to me.

'White Christmas' is one of my favorite movies, so I've always just had a love for that kind of golden era musical.

The thing I try to tell people who are just starting in the business is to listen to yourself, trust yourself, and be kind to yourself. And do the work to cultivate who you are and what your point of view is. Don't try to be like anybody else. That's what will make you an interesting artist.

I went to Syracuse University.

Growing up, I never felt like the pretty girl.

I grew up watching the films of 'Carousel' and 'Oklahoma' and 'The Music Man' and 'My Fair Lady' - all the classic musicals of that golden era, The sort of more modern musical theater, or what was modern when I was at a ripe teenage age, I wasn't really listening to that stuff. I was really more raised on the classics.

I didn't quite get 'If I Loved You.' I didn't understand what they're saying. 'Why are they saying if? Are they flirting? Is she being coy? Does she know what she's getting into?' I didn't understand this woman.

I think it's the hardest thing to remind yourself you have to do it the way you would do it. Because no one else is going to do it that way. If you don't do it, then no one else will - and the world won't see it.

I'm glad to say I'm experiencing more of a conversation in my artistic workforce world than I ever have before. But it's a job, as an artist, to reflect the world we live in; that's our job.

If I've gotten to a point where people want to see something because I'm in it, I'm grateful and humbled. But having an awareness of that doesn't help me do what I need to do, I think.

This business is crazy-pants. We flit in and out of these fantasy worlds and these intense periods of work and camaraderie, and then it goes away, and you do it all over again.

As an actor, you always use the tools of who you are and your experience of what you have to offer.

I'd been acting in Chicago since I came back after University, and I got a call from my agent saying, 'They're doing this revival of 'On a Clear Day,' and I actually auditioned when the team came through Chicago for the 'American Idiot' tour.

I always loved playing the sidekick, and that's what I expected - I didn't think I was pretty enough or diva enough to play the lead.

My dad listened to a lot of James Taylor when I was growing up. We had a couple of his cassettes in the car, and we'd go on a lot of long family car trips. It was either strange musicals or James Taylor - or Whitney Houston. It was quite the combination there.

There's not millions of dollars riding behind something - so I think a lot of people took chances on me and cast me in roles in Chicago that I never would have gotten cast in possibly if I had come to New York right away. I got to be the not-your-typical-choice for a role.

Directors didn't know what to do with me in college. I didn't really sound like a belter. I didn't look like a soprano. But in New York, I was in the right place at the right time, where my unusualness fit the bill.