Quotes About Performance

I grew up playing classical piano and percussion.

I can play the piano. I started off with lessons, and then, as we always had a piano in the house, I would play around and became quite good.

I can sit down at a piano or with a guitar and just chug away for hours and be perfectly content with whatever comes out. But when it comes to something that somebody else is going to listen to, then I do feel a great deal of pressure to do something that's exceptional, at least in what I consider to be at the limits of what I can do.

I don't want costumes and makeup between me and the audience - I want more direct communication. There's something for me about being honest on stage, and I'm at my most honest when I'm behind a piano. So I prefer my concert performances.

When I was a kid, I played the piano for six years, and all my family are musicians.

I draw and play the piano badly. But when I'm doing those things, I'm concentrating so hard there's no room for worry. I find that onstage, too.

When I was starting out in this business, that was the norm. You did it all. You looked around, and entertainers could dance, sing, play the piano, act, make you laugh.

Playing the piano is incredibly personal... But when it's your own piece, it's doubly so.

Everyone at school knew I wanted to be a singer. I'd always be banging on the piano playing my new song. The teacher would gather us round, and the whole class would listen.

I sometimes write songs on the piano, even though I don't actually play the piano. I always hire someone to play for me whenever I decide to sing a song I have written on the piano. My song 'Rosa' is one.

My muse has always been the piano.

If you're small and can speak clearly and you're a cute kid, that's the craft, really. The whole child actor thing can be dangerous sometimes. Other kids were taking piano lessons; I did ballet and acting.

A female piano player is always pretty cool to me.

And I've played piano since I was little, so I was originally the piano player in the band.

Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.

As a piano player, if 10 is concert level, I'd put myself at a 5 or a 6, but in a completely different genre than classical or opera. In terms of classical and opera, playing accompaniment, I'd say I was a 3.

I'm not really a piano player, but I play enough to get away with it.

Each time that you're playing a character, it's hard to pick a favorite.

It's easier to pick off a fast runner than to pick off a lazy runner.

If you do well as an actor, a good director will pick up on it, and keep it in the film.

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

I had dinner with Marlene Dietrich in the early 1970s. I went to pick her up and she had someone with her, a dreadful man. He was writing a book about her, and he said to her, 'You're so cold when you perform,' and she said, 'You didn't listen to the voice.' She said the difficulty was to place the voice with the face.

You try to pick good stories, and that's pretty much all the control you have as an actor.

When you lose, people don't understand why you play this way or don't pick that player.