Quotes About Performance

If the gig's going really well, I'm incredibly happy on stage and really feel good about my life and things.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

Do you know how many concerts I've done in my whole life, in more than 35 years of performing? Sixty-four.

I will perform My Heart Will Go On for the rest of my life and it will always remain a very emotional experience for me.

I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

Slippery stages were the terror of my life.

If you want me to swim fast, you have to let me enjoy my life.

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.

It was the best night of my life, getting to dance on stage with Madonna!

That's what I loved about show business, no two days were alike. It's an exciting life.

The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don't get to do in real life.

There's a point you get to on the stage where you're not remembering lines but living them, and you reach this pure moment which, really, is more intense than what you can achieve in life.

Acting is really only part of my life. I'm addicted to it.

Songwriting is actually a really great outlet. I kind of recommend it. You get to sum up whatever is going on in your life in a song, then perform it really passionately.

I mean, look, I wear makeup in films. I don't wear makeup in real life. It's just part of the gig, that's all.

And I'm not very coordinated, either. Only on ice skates, not in real life.

It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage.

I'm not a method actor, but I'm affected by the life I share my life with during shooting. It's always a very strange and special period for me.

America doesn't reward people of my age, either in day-to-day life or for their performances.

There are certain ways of being that people don't find acceptable or very pleasant in regular life, but you go out on stage and do pretty much the same thing and they find it spellbinding.

Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?'

The actor's life is the road. Always has been, always will be. That is his cross and his glory.