Billy Porter Quotes
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I love the community of theater. There is something about the camaraderie: People who show up eight times a week to do a show. It's unlike any other business. It's just lovely. You feel like you're in a family.
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Seeing Jennifer Holliday from 'Dreamgirls' perform on the Tony Awards telecast and later discovering Barbra Streisand by listening to her albums at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh really changed everything for me.
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I just feel like we as a human race tend to fear that which we don't understand. It's cause for a lot of bad things and bad behavior to exist on the planet. Artists have a way of touching people and changing minds in a way that sometimes other mediums don't.
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When you're doing what you love, it's not exhausting at all, actually. It's completely empowering and exhilarating.
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You can't ever put yourself in a position where someone is requiring you to inhabit somebody else's energy. You have to own your thing, or own it with very fiber of your being.
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I'm trying to embrace social media because it gives artists a little more power than we've had in the past.
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For years I tried to put myself in a box, and it frustrated me, so I had to let go and let the universe take its course.
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I've worked with a lot of gay and lesbian organizations. I sit on the board of the Empire State Pride Agenda. I've also done a lot of work for Broadway Care/Equity Fights AIDS. I think it's important because, when we can be of service to others, it only enhances our lives. I've been helped a lot in my life.
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I want to do work that means something to me so that when I go to work at the theater eight times a week, I want to be there.
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For me, life is about being positive and hopeful, choosing to be joyful, choosing to be encouraging, choosing to be empowering.
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Broadway! Broad-way! I don't aspire to the middle. I aspire to the tip-tip-top of it all.
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All you need to do is turn on the news, and in five minutes, you're depressed with the state of the world. Choosing joy is a completely active choice. It doesn't just happen. You can't just say, 'I want to be happy.' You have to take action.
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We need to understand that whatever we do, we're all human beings first.
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I had to come out to my mother three times over a twelve-year period, but I first came out to her when I was sixteen. It didn't go over so well, because I grew up in the Pentecostal Church. It was a very strict environment. She has since done a lot of work and has really blown my mind. She has learned about my life and has changed her mind.
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I had something nobody else could do - I sang in a way that separated me - and, when you're trying to get noticed, you play your trump card.
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There was a time in the '90s where, as an African-American man, you had to be a misogynistic R&B star or a rapper, and I didn't fit into either one of those. I was advised by my label to remain closeted at that time.
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Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I'm political. Sometimes that's all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.
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My truth is I am gay and out, and if I can't do that in my music, then I don't need it. Fortunately, I do feel like there is a movement against homophobia, and I hope to be part of that.
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I took 'Grease' to play my trump card, my voice, and get attention that would lead to auditions for serious work like 'Angels in America.' But I backed myself into a corner with 'Grease,' and it took me 17 years to get out.
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I've always been passionate about fashion.
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When I had a record deal in the '90s, that was my dream - to make an album like Barbra Streisand's Broadway album - and they laughed me out of the room. Broadway wasn't cool. But artists like Michael Buble and Josh Groban have brought the classic genre back to the forefront, so I'm trying to find my way inside that market.
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People don't see me in traditional roles; I'm not getting cast in the revival of 'Company' as Bobby.
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Many movie stars or American Idol contestants sort of fall into theater... and say, 'Oh, yeah, I would love to do theater.' And then they get here and say, 'Oh, wait a minute, this actually is a craft!' It's not just show up one day and do it. It's show up eight times a week, twice on Wednesdays and twice on Saturdays.
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There's this misconception that I've been turning down roles. It's just not true. The reality is, there was nothing for me to do, nobody was calling, the phone wasn't ringing.