Quotes About Performance

As a performer, you get your 'thing.' You're the deadpan comedian, or the mad one, or the sexy one, and then you rely on that and mine that seam for years and years and you kind of forget who you were. There's this mask that you hold up between you and the audience that means they never get to see who you really are.

When you're doing that TV thing, you're doing the same thing for years and years. You can fall into bad habits as an actor and I think it can take a toll on your ability to act, which I think is scary.

I haven't killed anyone on television in years and years. Must have been twenty something years.

You hand the baton on, and that's why roles like 'Medea' resonate for years and years, as each new actor comes to it.

Years and years ago, I sang at a blues bar with a band behind me. It was with my friend, my guitar teacher at the time. I took some sporadic lessons.

And you sort of have this idea in your head about how you're going to go about the audition, and as soon as you get there, all of those thoughts just kind of drop away and you realize you're standing in front of Amy Adams, whom you've admired for years and years. That was the first time that I was ever really starstruck in my life.

With Hall & Oates, honestly, after years and years of playing the same material, it's easy to coast. I can coast through a show.

When you lived it for years and years and years and seen different characters just get pummeled and squashed because 'I said so,' it gets mighty damn disturbing and it's such a downer when you're trying to get a guy to perform at the top level for the audience that he's capable of.

I don't get the jitters and I don't get nervous, because I build that comfort on set for myself. Sometimes if I'm gonna do something really crazy, it helps me to yell or look like an idiot on set, so that when I'm about to do a scene, I've already embarrassed myself. I find ways to work around getting the jitters.

I am not a person who yells at all, but I realized that I have always felt so good after doing the Tarzan yell, after doing Charo, or screaming as Eunice.

When you make a drama, you spend all day beating a guy to death with a hammer, or what have you. Or, you have to take a bite out of somebody's face. On the other hand, with a comedy, you yell at Billy Crystal for an hour, and you go home.

We have this pre-show thing where we all get into a huddle and yell, 'Pop, pop, it's showtime,' and I have to give credit to Bruno Mars for that one. I started doing it after I became obsessed with '24K Magic.' I want to ask Bruno if he'll ever come to my huddle with me!

I just get such a connection from an audience. You play with them. I get mad at them. I yell at them. They yell at me. It's just fun.

It's like all guys want to do is make a dunk, grab their shirt and yell out and scream - they could be down 30 points but that's what they do. Okay, so you made a dunk. Get back down the floor on defense!

Something goes wrong, I yell at them -'Fix it'- whether it's their fault or not. You can only really yell at the players you trust.

People don't yell nasty things at actors - they let them continue.

Sometimes I know a joke I'm going to yell out ahead of time, but most of the time it's stream of conscious. You never really know it until you've got everyone dressed up, the set is built, all the extras are here.

I can scream and yell that I can still play, but unless I prove it, people will say, 'Yeah, Penny, whatever.'

I talk too quiet, and I have to yell on stage.

I always give the encore over to chaos, so people can yell out requests and I can hack my way through a song that I don't really know anymore.

Once you become a comedian, you accept that people are just going to yell stuff at you.

Any time you're in front of a camera and have them yell 'Cut, re-shoot the scene,' are you kidding me? That's a huge advantage.

It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.

When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'