Quotes About Performance

The 'Daughter of the Regiment' that I did in Boston was vintage Sarah Caldwell, which is to say it was brilliant. Before my career was over, I'm sure I sang the role of Marie at least a hundred times, often in productions that cost a fortune, but none touched hers.

I like to wear short-sleeved collared shirts and high-waist trousers with shiny shoes. And at night, when I'm playing, I'll often wear suits. But it started with my uncle's vintage clothes.

I often enjoy wearing loud and outspoken clothing on stage, so off it, I usually wear loose-fitting vintage shirts, jeans, or track suits I've had forever. I just add styling to those pieces.

All of the vintage photos of Ballets Russes are so inspiring.

Well I've been playing an SG forever, and I've got some other vintage Gibsons I like to use in the studio.

The whole point of an album is to understand the artist and enjoy the music - it's supposed to make you want to go to a concert to see them in the flesh and get the album on vinyl and be a part of everything. That's what I'm about.

To play vinyl onstage is not my thing. For me, vinyl is for home listening.

People book me because of the songs I write, not because of the sets that I play, per se... I'm sure I'm going to be moving to a laptop really soon, but I was one of the last guys to let the vinyl go. I was crying. In my room, I still have thousands of records. I still pull them out and play them all the time.

I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance.

After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'.

I loved doing Shakespeare. My two favorite roles, in fact, have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Viola Davis is just one of those actors who is never bad in anything. She could be in an awful film but you'd never come away from it saying she was bad.

I love Viola Davis. I call her 'Queen.' I think she's phenomenal. She's so raw and so bold. When I first saw her was in 'Doubt,' and she just changed everything for me. Her performance was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and I think she's phenomenal.

I would absolutely love to do something with Viola Davis or Meryl Streep. I just think both of those women fall so deep into their characters that you are no longer looking at the actresses, you are looking at the characters they embraced.

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

It's always difficult to play a scene of physical violence because you're always afraid that you don't know your own strength and might hurt someone.

I don't go to things because I want to see violence, I go to things because I want to see them handled well.

Violence is used to portray what happens in a film. It only helps portray the actors and what they do. I think it is more about the story, when you have something to play off of.

I have no problem with violence, I have no problem playing horrible people.

If you read Shakespeare's stage directions, all the gore and violence is right in there.

There's an actor in the TV show 'Prison Break,' Robert Knepper, who plays a violent sociopath, and he's just incredible in that role.

Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.

I do feel almost violent when I'm watching things that I don't think are good enough. I get furious for the audience. I want to say to them, 'This play is not supposed to be like this. They've got it completely wrong. You should be electrified by this.'

In my first film, Five Corners, I played a very scary, violent crazed character, and it exposed me to a lot of directors.