Quotes About Performance

This is something you learn as soon as you walk through the doors at Old Trafford: that you're never better than your last performance. You always have to improve on your last performance.

I love playing the Fillmore. I love the walk from the hotel and climbing up those old, iron stairs that lead to the stage. I imagine Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors and all those other great bands climbing those same stairs.

The Doors are Ray, Robby, Jim and John.

I've said for many, many years, as long as I can ever remember, when I'm asked, 'Hey, what do you look for first in a quarterback?' The first thing I look for is accuracy, because the rest of it doesn't matter.

The first thing I ever did was play talent shows at the Uptown Theater and the Adelphi Ballroom.

The first thing I did was 'Ziegfeld Follies,' a small bit en pointe with Fred Astaire.

When you get older, the first thing that starts to go is reflexes, and reflexes are important for any person, especially an athlete - to react to something in a time when something is going on, and you can't be a second or two behind.

When you start a movie, it's not like other kinds of work that you have when you know your boss for years or colleagues for years. You're meeting everyone, mostly, for the first time. You have to get comfortable with those people so you can perform, because the first thing that is going to shut you down is any kind of anxiety.

The first thing I do when I read a part is see if I can identify emotionally with a character. If I make that connection, everything else is just working on knowing their life circumstances and manifesting those through practice and research.

So the first thing that I thought about was, 'How is this car going to handle?' But then after I'd been driving with it and practicing with it and I accomplished that, then I just kind of sat back.

I think the first thing I did was several scenes from Romeo and Juliet.

I had a great start in television; the first thing I did was an episode of 'Performance' called 'The Entertainer' with Michael Gambon playing Archie Rice.

The first thing that I do when I come out every night is to look at the faces in front of me, very individually.

When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.

There's acting, and then there's auditioning; mastering auditioning is sort of the first thing an actor really needs to nail down when he or she wants to get a part.

As an actor, the first thing you're taught is, 'Don't look into the camera; ignore it.'

Almost the first thing you see after entering the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum is a large-screen film of Harry Houdini hanging by his ankles upside-down from a tall building, high over a sea of men in fedoras, and thrashing his way out of a straitjacket.

The first thing you have to get used to in any kind of acting is the ability to make a fool of yourself. If you haven't learnt how to make a fool of yourself, you shouldn't be on the boards. That's absolutely what it's all about.

The first thing I did on television was a PBS thing where I played a priest. It was a Walt Whitman or Carl Sandburg story - I can't quite remember - but I was a turn-of-the-20th-century priest kind of guy. Never saw it; don't know if I was any good or not.

The first thing I will say about looking after your voice is get a pair of in-ear monitors because one of the most common problems singers have is trying to hear themselves on stage.

The first thing I pack for meets is my makeup bag!

The first thing that was intimidating was when I started rehearsing to play Riff in the London company. That first day of rehearsal, I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm never going to learn this. I'm too slow.'

Before singing, I was acting. I was always more into acting than singing. It was the first thing I always wanted to do.

For me, the first thing that I respond to - whether it's doing a play or movie or television or anything - is just the character. Is this a guy whose shoes I want to walk in for the next 12 days or six months?