Quotes About Comedy

I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs.

There's no white comic that sells tickets to black people like me. They're going to get their hair done, get a new outfit, and come out to see a white dude.

My job is to bring the tickle. I know what's funny.

I also think if you're an actor and you can improvise, when you go on an audition and you can improvise you're just a genius. If you can, you know, take a Tide commercial and you can just say one funny line that's not in the commercial they think you're a genius.

I was a 'Laurel and Hardy' nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life, and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he'd want me to play him.

I don't want to tie myself into one area or the other. I think its important not to rely heavily on either TV or stand-up, but to let them work off of each other.

I denied my comic thing there for awhile. I always made people laugh, but my family said that's not the real world, I had to put on a suit and tie and be serious.

George Carlin is kind of my template now because George Carlin before was straight laced regular comic and he had short hair, a tie, suit, nightclub guy. Then he said screw it, let his hair grow, just started telling what he thought was the truth. So that's what I'm trying to do.

I would make it illegal to walk into a comedy club with a tie on.

I've seen many female comics that a lot of people haven't heard of who are so funny, and I saw them come up, and they were working so hard, and then all of a sudden they had a baby, and they just got tied up in motherhood, and eventually, they kind of just stopped doing stand-up, and I thought it was such a shame.

The 'Family Ties' role was the first of many gay roles that I've ended up playing. I remember that I made them laugh, and it made me feel good, 'cause it really cracked them up.

It's so long since I've had sex I've forgotten who ties up who.

I would say about 90 per cent of drunken idiots in comedy clubs wear ties, particularly in London where I work most of the time.

No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn't be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes.

Those hot pants of hers were so damned tight, I could hardly breathe.

The connection between pathos and broad comedy is very tight. But you do far more work in a comedy scene than you do in a straight scene. It's much harder.

If you're improvising with Paul Reiser, man, you'd better hold on tight!

The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.

People are funny, and in the most tragic situations, when comedy erupts from nowhere, it can turn on its head within the space of a second or a minute. You're laughing one minute and you're crying the next and that's just life for me, and that is what people are like.

Comedy was why I got into acting the first place. Peter Sellers was a huge influence on my wanting to act. I grew up with him and found him hysterical. The Pink Panther films were an inspiration, from my earliest childhood days, when I was watching them with my brother and my dad.

Lady Beatrice grunted and turned to Emma. "Here is your escort, dear." She shook the elderly man's arm and shouted in his ear, "This is Miss Peterson, Mr. Maxwell. You'll be taking her in to dinner." "What? Thinner?" Mr. Maxwell was so bent over, his face was only inches above Emma's bosom. "Sacrilege! Don't take an ounce off 'em, my dear." Emma stepped back before a bit of drool hit her bodice.

My new movie, Fools Rush In, is a romantic comedy and the girl I play in that is very warm, very sweet.

Hugh Grant is the main man. He's the number one romantic comedy man in the world.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness. Oh? Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.