Quotes About Performance

Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me.

I started taking ballet lessons when I was 4, and I was performing in ballet companies when I was 10, and I did summer stock in Miami Beach when I was 12, and finally I said, 'I gotta go to Broadway.'

I would love to do a biopic of a famous singer, like Diana Ross or Donna Summer, or an old jazz story that we haven't seen before. I would love to do that! I would love to play Diana Ross 'cause she's an icon. I'm salivating to do that.

One of the things that I'd like to get back to that I did as a younger actor was to work on, you know, a rep season for a summer where you did two or three Shakespeares, and you'd do a couple of either new plays or classic plays, and you did a different one almost every night.

When you're singing before 15,000 people at a summer concert outside, you need to look beautiful, because that's what people want.

Each time I hit the road to gig, it still feels like I'm going to summer camp.

So I majored in Drama, did all the plays that were possible to do, skated through school in order to be in every production on stage or backstage in whatever capacity and I came to New York looking for work in the summers.

I was 12 when it really hit me. I did children's theatre camp during the summers and played a fairy in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The next summer, I played Clytemnestra in 'Agamemnon' and I was like, 'OK, this is amazing.'

Whenever I'm out on the basketball court, I lace up and just hoop. Whether it's in summertime, at practice, in the games, playoffs, every time I step out on the basketball court, I approach it the same way.

I remember, when I was doing 'Nicholas Nickleby', James Archer came to see me at the interval and said, 'My father would like to see you after the show.' It felt rather as if I had been summoned by the Queen, and I was cocky enough to think, 'Who the hell is he to summon me?'

I realized with Broadway everything written for black people is usually written in the past, and I'm kind of a contemporary guy. I don't think you want to see me in 'Raisin in the Sun'.

The first important role was a Broadway lead I did called 'The Royal Hunt Of The Sun' by Peter Shaffer, the guy who did 'Equus' and 'Amadeus.' Many of the important roles that I got later on were because the guy who was going to hire me was in that audience and had his mind blown. I tend to do that. I blow people's minds with my performances.

Even if you're playing the most well-known repertoire under the sun, I still believe you have a responsibility as an artist to tell the audience why you're playing it, what are the key aspects to it, and then throw in a bit about its historical context.

When I was doing 'A Raisin in the Sun' with Sean Combs, we began in bed, and he would give me 10 kisses and an 11th for luck before the play began.

Most of the time, particularly with this record, 'The Light of the Sun,' I really just been standing in front of a microphone and blacking out musically, you know. I'd come back a couple hours later and there's six songs from beginning to end, you know? I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know how I'm going to say it.

It's a bit of a history lesson, being an actor. I was in 'Burnt By The Sun' at the National, which was set in Stalinist Russia, so I discovered all about that. You learn so much as you go along.

Clearly in my mind, I have two distinct positions - owner and manager. So I am open to reviewing my performance as a manager as any other person in Sun Pharma.

My dream is to play Coachella, main stage, when the sun's going down.

I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.

Any given Sunday you'll catch me rapping and joking.

I'd go with our dad to watch our brothers play Sunday League. When I heard all the shouts, the reaction of the crowd, I wanted it to be about me.

I go to an acting class every Sunday.

I mean, I guess I started during the comedy boom, so it was literally like, on Sunday you could decide you wanted to be a comic, and on Monday, you could be on stage.

The best thing I can say is professional football is a business. When they are recruiting football players, they are not recruiting model citizens. Everybody has to be aware of this. What's being selected for the NFL is the ability to play and perform on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is secondary.