Quotes About Performing

The fundamental motive of true teaching is the love that seeks and studies and performs.

The first music-learning thing that I took seriously was piano lessons when I was a kid. I guess that was probably the only time that I was forced to perform music, because I had piano recitals, and my school also had mandatory music classes that had some performing required.

When I was little, I was very loud and loved performing in front of people. I was fearless. When I hit puberty, I became very shy and self-conscious. I still get nervous sometimes before shooting and definitely before big auditions.

I am basically a shy person, so performing sometimes helps me focus - having all those people concentrate their attention on you. I don't see it so much as becoming another person onstage; it's more exploring a different side of your personality.

Whenever there was a show like 'Calamity Jane,' me and my siblings would be plonked on stage in a costume because it was easier to have us in it rather than sort out babysitters.

I can do comedy, so people want me to do that, but the other side of comedy is depression. Deep, deep depression is the flip side of comedy. Casting agents don't realize it but in order to be funny you have to have that other side.

When I was in college, I would go out, and I would go to these open mic nights at Stitches and Nick's Comedy Stop, so I was going to classes during the day, and then at night, I would be signing up on the lists.

I've been doing comedy since I was two. You know, kids who make other kids laugh. The sickness had set in! I could make my friends' parents laugh; I had a sense of what was silly and funny.

Simon and I are good pals. We're friends except when we walk out on 'The X Factor,' he always has a go at me. And I never expect it. We're good friends behind the scenes, we do Westlife together, we are friends.

I knew I wanted to be an actor but didn't know how to go about it. That's why my ambition, initially, was not to play a lead role in a Bollywood film.

It was only after I'd had some injuries that I basically retired from the performing side of show business and then began working in casting. I did that for 19 years or so before a friend of mine decided to cast me as Phyllis Lapin-Vance on 'The Office.'

When I'm writing for certain instruments, you want to write within what you know about that instrument but also challenge the player. Something like 'Aheym' is very virtuosic - but because I have a history of performing music, I don't like unplayable music.

I'm fortunate to have got the opportunity to play interesting characters.

I'd faced a lot of rejection from labels and the industry, and it was getting hard to keep believing in myself. But something wouldn't let me - inside - I had this voice that was relentlessly hopeful, and honestly, I just loved performing and writing too much to ever really quit.

Sweden was very nice. I did a lot of television. I wrote, directed and was in a lot of television there.

I used to live in Philly, so I was in Baltimore a lot wrestling before I got to WWE, wrestling for different promotions.

My dad was a wrestler back in the early '90s, so it just brought everything full circle with my dad's background and my love of performing and entertainment, and now here I am in the WWE.

Yeah, I did some small parts in high school and the first year of college and then fairly soon thereafter I settled into the backstage scenery, and then at the University of Maryland I was doing posters for their productions.

I had been on this improv team at this really great improv theater. It's called iO now. It used to be called Improv Olympic. They have showcases for Lorne Michaels and other writers and people who work at 'SNL' usually about once a year, although I don't know if it always happens.

I've had some rank auditions where I embarrassed myself to new heights, which is hard for me to do. I was never good at auditioning. There are a number of actors over the years come up the ranks who are horrific at auditioning.

My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another.

As a performing group, the Beatles began by playing old rock favorites, for dancing, to tough audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg. When they began writing seriously, they discovered that they couldn't compose in the early American rock tradition.

I'm always about trying to fill a need with what I do in my artistry. There is definitely a need in the performing arts world for a movement to come along that seriously connects with a next generation audience while still maintaining the timeless artistic objectives present throughout the history of the American music tradition.

When I was still a student, I came out of a performing arts high school, and the female students who were doing traditional dance and ballet were so beautiful. They were beautiful, starting from their postures.