Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions.
When there's no technical problems, if you did the right casting, and the scene is well written, the actor will give you a strong performance with his intuition right from the start.
Obviously Mad TV, SNL are one kind of show, whereas The State belongs to the kind of show that is entirely conceived written and performed by a set group that existed before the TV show.
Listening and hearing are two different things, and acting is comprehending what the person is saying, thinking how it makes you feel and responding. That's the key to really honest, truthful, compelling performance.
I have been trying to find out exactly when listeners and performers decided that applause between movements would not be allowed, but nobody seems to have been willing to admit that they were the culprit.
I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.
The performances I enjoy are the ones that are hard to read or ambiguous or left-of-centre because it makes you look closer and that's what humans are like - quite mysterious creatures, hard to pinpoint.
I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record.
When we perform at our highest level of potential, we are content. Because we have given I best in what we enjoy doing.
Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.
I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.
If the goal is to build companies that maximize long-term equity value, then optimizing corporate performance in a way that Wall Street appreciates is obviously critical to that goal.
As a comic, I've heard gunshots while I'm trying to get to sleep. I've performed where people wanted to do you harm after the show because of something you said.
The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.
One of the really important things about the Olympics is, to enjoy yourself, you have to accept that it's different and feed off the enthusiasm of everyone and the inspiration and hopefully that will elevate your performance.
I find all of my performances come down to mathematics in a sense - how do you approach the problem of this character? Sometimes I crack that problem, sometimes I don't.
No one knows what the top-performing asset class will be next year. Lacking this prescience, your next-best solution is to own all of the classes and rebalance regularly.
It was important to have a similar energy in my performance. To make the character too different would have just been about my ego because it didn't need to be drastically different.
With every song I have a person in mind who, in a perfect world, would perform with me. Usually I end up not getting that person, and I'm forced to settle for someone else.
I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.
My stand-up has a lot of performance in it, and I loved doing it so much that, after years, I put the idea of having a show on the back burner.
