I did theatre when I was nine, I think. Nine and ten, and that was just the beginning of my whole involvement in acting, my whole interest. I don't really remember it that well. But it was really fun. I mean, it was exciting just to be on stage in front of an audience. It gives you a different kind of rush.
And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything.
On stage, I find anger at the unfairness of the world easily.
I found that if I got up on the stage to entertain the troops I could make them shut up and look.
I believe a great performer is someone who sounds just as great live as they do in the studio and vice versa. They should know how to work the stage.
I think musicals can be more than what people imagine. That'll be the case with 'Matilda.' It's such a clever thing to stage. Parents would have read this when they were young and will want to share it with their children because they have such a fondness for the source.
There are a lot of actors - I'm probably one - who are most at home when they're on stage.
Every three days on average, I am alone on stage, facing the public.
The little song and dance number at the end - that's me, my voice, howling out. It was a new experience for me. I've never sung before and I've certainly never sung on screen. I think I sung on stage when I was 13 and for some reason nobody's asked me to try it again since.
It really comes down to Mick. He's the one who was constantly trying to get these five people in one room together. This is his love, his baby. It's his band, and there's nothing more he loves to do than get up on stage and play with us.
The stage is the best experience in the world. It's a great compliment to be able to share the music, because people can hear my album but they don't get to make the connection in the same way as when it's one-to-one.
I have a phenomenal team behind me who have helped get me here and I, along with them, will now put everything we can into the final few weeks of preparations before the Olympic Games, where I am aiming to race well, work well through the rounds, post good times and maybe even a personal best time on the biggest stage of them all.
My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.
When I was going through school, I joined the Lyceum Youth Theatre, and that kind of cemented it. Through being in and around the building and watching shows, I realised that there was something I really loved about it, so I went into the stage management side.
My family is as far from a stage family as you could ever possibly find.
We like reactions - a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction.
I think the more you do this and the more comfortable you become on stage, you start speaking more and becoming more of a character in yourself.
A friend of mine had his own theater company, and he jumped me in like I was in a gang. And once I came in, it was just that simple. For the first time in my life, I felt, 'This is a career, this is a life that I think I can grow old doing.' It was love at first sight. I loved being on stage and reading these plays. It was great.
Music is like a really sacred, awesome thing. That first 45 minutes to two hours that you're on stage spending time with music every night is always really great.
I'm the star of stage, screen, and television now, but I'm also available for children's parties and bar mitzvahs.
Marc by Marc Jacobs was my favorite. The stage was so big, and there were so many people there. I had very bad vision during the show because I forgot to put in my contacts, but I didn't fall or anything.
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room.
We have to keep our eye on inflation, but so far inflation remains reasonably in check on the global stage.
When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent.
At this stage of my life I would rather try and have some small impact within a company and suffer through those things than make such a big stink that nobody can trust to work with you. It's very important in an environment of a big institution that people don't feel threatened that you're going to expose them in any way.
We played a festival in Ireland once, and in the middle of 'New Slang,' the Scissor Sisters kicked in across the field on this mega stage. It was a little distracting. It was hard to keep track of what I was supposed to sing.
I feel nowadays a lot of bands can be too overly produced. There's something about the leather pants and bare bodies and Axl Rose running back and forth on a stage and going crazy. I love all that.
I'll always be back to the stage. I have no doubt that the stage will always call me back. There will always be a character that no one else can play, and I'll be back to play it.
I'm in a difficult position in the sense that, preposterous as this might sound, I don't like being the centre of attention. I get up on stage every night and play songs, but I almost feel the songs are the centre of attention. I don't like opening my birthday presents in front of people, either.
You worry about whether you are match-fit, coming back to the stand-up stage.
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
I could beat my mike stand into the stage, but I was still in pain. Maybe fans liked it, but sometimes people forget you're a person and they're more into the entertainment value. It's taken a long time to turn that around and give a strong show without it being a kamikaze show.
My biggest ambition when I was younger was to appear on stage at what was then Nimrod, which is the theatre where my father used to take me on Sunday afternoons to see matinees. The most extraordinary things used to occur on that stage.
On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.
The stage was our school, our home, our life.
When the band would leave the stage, and then the audience would just take over, and keep the groove goin'.
