Joel Grey Quotes
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All the things you do, even the shows that don't work, are as much work, but you learn more from the things that are difficult.
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Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.
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The theater is the place where people create ideas and send messages out, and you learn, and I think it's a fair venue for disagreement and enlightenment.
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I'd like to direct something at the Public.
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When I met Jo Wilder, I fell crazy in love and never thought about homosexuality. And I thought, 'Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is life.'
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I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.
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I love that moment just before the curtain goes up, whether I'm sitting in the audience or standing backstage. It's full of expectation. It's a thrill that's unequaled anywhere.
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When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.
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I really do enjoy everything I do. I just do so much.
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My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'
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I think there is a lot of loss in being a professional child actor. All of a sudden, you start to want to be an adult at the age of 8 or 9. I never did kid stuff, so to speak, so I was in many ways ostracized by the other kids. But I did get this other life, so it was a trade-off.
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Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.
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I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.
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After my bar mitzvah, I started to assimilate, to really not pay attention to my roots. The anti-Semitic experiences of my youth had been very painful. You try to put all that in the past and become a person of the world. I think that's the right thing to do. But it's not right to leave out who you really are. That's a tragedy.
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I'm about possibilities and about surprises and the life force.
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I was small growing up, and to make matters worse, I wore glasses, and my mother dressed me in attention-getting outfits. I was a target of bullies.
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The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.
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I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.
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If you don't tell the whole truth about yourself, life is a ridiculous exercise.
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I spent 15 years of not being able to get a job creating a role on Broadway.
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The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.
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My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I'm sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.
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When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.
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My daughter, Jennifer Grey, was in 'Dirty Dancing,' which was shot in the Catskill Mountains, where the great old Jewish entertainers used to appear. It was the first time she'd been to the Borscht Belt, and I don't think she's been back since.