A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona.
'Billy on the Street' is a persona. It's crafted; it has writers. It's a mixture of performance art and comedy.
Portraying Mozart is a scary task. Whenever I'm asked to portray actual historic figures, it comes with extra accountability. Not just to your director and playwright, but to the man himself and the beloved persona that the public forms.
Television, in particular, doesn't look for talent; it looks for personas. You have a great persona? You can be a TV star.
He presented himself as the friend to Main Street America, and yet that aw-shucks persona ended up packaging policies and programs that were at times deeply injurious to the very people he swore to serve. After all, Reaganomics set in motion one of the largest wealth redistributions in American history, away from the poor and toward the rich.
I started when Chris Rock did 'Bigger & Blacker.' I used to watch that before I went onstage as inspiration to get hype, but I noticed I started taking on his cadence and talking like him. I was also doing the New York-style comedy thing, which was angry and annoyed. I was creating a persona instead of trying to embrace my own.
I think dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona and give one the chance to enhance one's best physical features.
A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though.
I'm not interested in a persona.
I love Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart because they're bringing irony back into American humor, which is a delicious treat. The entire Colbert persona of being extreme right-wing when he's not at all is highly amusing. He does it so well, but sometimes a little too well. My wife is convinced he's completely that way.
I was trained as an actor and taught to believe at a very young age that I could be anything and do anything, and then you find yourself painted into a corner by your own image or persona.
My onstage persona really is a persona, you know, and really the moment I step onstage, it kind of kicks into gear.
I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it's a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can't separate persona from psyche; you just can't do it.
If people didn't know me and only knew my public persona, what I'd want them to know is everything that I do, I do for the Glory of Lord. Because of my Christian faith, that's who I am. I wasn't always that way, but I'm very proud that I am.
One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he's doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona.
It was difficult to find my way into 'I Am Abraham,' to feel confident enough to inhabit Lincoln's persona. I began with a prologue in a neutral voice, wrote of Lincoln at the White House with a sly young reporter quizzing him about his humble origins.
One of the hardest aspects of this protracted public persona is not knowing others as well as they feel they know me. It's a rather clumsy feeling actually; to not know someone who acts as though you're old friends.
It's not until you develop your own voice, your own persona onstage that you become your own comic, who you really are.
You have to have a certain persona to be a star, you know, and I don't have that. I'm a banana.
After I saw Kiss on stage, I wanted my show to look like the fourth of July. The persona of Rick James was wild and crazy, sex, drugs and rock and roll.
What most people do is try to find a comfortable persona that they're in alignment with and the public likes and appreciates them for.
As far as the lack of hits goes, I think perhaps it's because I've played a lot of different roles and have not created a persona that the public can latch on to. I have played everything from psychopathic killers to romantic leading men, and in picking such diverse roles I have avoided typecasting.
I'm just glad that the whole John Wayne persona of a man is sort of old school now, because I'd never be able to do that. If that was the going rate today, I wouldn't be working.
Even on the stage, I've played a bit of a persona, and the persona I played was a much brasher, more arrogant, less aware, less educated version of me.
I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.
I'd rather be dealt with as a person than a persona. With my children, I'm just 'Mom.' At the end of the day, the position is just a position, a title is just a title, and those things come and go. It's really your essence and your values that are important.
Using pseudonyms was such a part of the early feminist movement. We didn't want to have this star system. We wanted attention on the ideas, not the persona of the writer.
I'm always thinking about songs and how I can sing a song that would resonate with my voice, my persona. I want it to be a pleasant experience that's not just about hearing my voice. I remember some singers whose voices were so pretty, it didn't matter what they sang - you loved it.
I'm going through life's cycles at an alarmingly fast pace, but my persona has a Peter Pan quality: he doesn't age.
While many comics have a secret persona, I fundamentally want to be myself.
I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my poetry. I like my persona; I often wish I were him and not me.
As I get older, I'm sort of fascinated with the idea of somebody who could construct an entire persona for themselves - one that was really, in a lot of ways, fundamentally at odds with who they really were as a person.
I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.
There's still people who think me being married to a sista is an act. What, you think I'd make that up for a persona?
A rap dude has his rap persona, his hyper version of himself. Do you know Method Man's real name? Or Elton John, Marylin Monroe? You make up this character. That's kind of what we have done with Die Antwoord, playing with characters.
You convey something that the public either trusts or it does not trust, and it has to do with the content and how you handle the news, but it also just has something to do with your persona.