When you are giving people the gospel, you are giving them something to believe, and you have to set the stage for that. You don't just drive up and dump the truck and drive off.
This is my 25th year of being on stage. A lot of people who I kind of toed up to the starting line with are no longer in this position. I feel very, very lucky.
It was a big step, to go from not talking to people to stepping on to a stage. That's when I felt the most comfortable, because I could do anything I wanted to and say anything I wanted to, even if people didn't laugh.
Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.
Oprah Winfrey gives you the stage? Shut your mouth. I said, 'I'm sorry for taking over your show.' She said, 'No, that's why we have you here.'
I don't agree with superstitious routines, but there are a couple of things I'll always do before performing. I'll get together with the band and chill out, and then, just before I go on stage, I'll always check my flies.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
When I do my concerts, you have got to think about everything else; so you have got to think about your gown, your hair, your body, and how you present yourself on stage.
I have a theory that most people disagree with. I really feel that acting for film and acting for the stage are two different crafts. I think that they share things in common. But I liken it to a painter switching over to photography.
When a man has emerged from slavery, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.
I went through a stage of wearing quite lairy trainers. I had all these trainers in gold or pink or silver. I look at them now in the cupboard - what was I thinking? Such an awful idea.
I think that the most important thing we look for in partners is that they can help build companies and, you know, we have the - we have the opportunity to do that at different stages.
I'm a very loyal person and I allowed myself to be defined as somebody who was doing Gordon's bidding. I should have fought back harder to define myself at an earlier stage.
Whatever I do, it's crucial to me that I give it 100 per cent. It doesn't matter if it's a short film, stage, theatre, TV or blockbuster. It doesn't matter what level of budget or prestige it is.
I never step upon a stage without asking myself whether I will succeed in finishing the opera. The fact is that a conscientious singer is never sure of himself or of anything. He is ever in the hands of Destiny.
It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the...
I never thought I'd go on a show like 'The X Factor,' simply because I didn't have enough confidence to do something like standing on a stage to have opinions thrown at me.
We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.
My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it's all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write.
Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you're dealing with a lot more characters, a lot more locations, and you're able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.
In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.
