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When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.
Joel Grey -
I'm essentially an actor. And the fact that I got away with singing and dancing for a long time is still a miracle to me.
Joel Grey
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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.
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey -
For a few years, there were three shows running on Broadway that I had all opened: 'Chicago,' 'Wicked' and 'Anything Goes.'
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey -
I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey
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When my father came out on stage wearing a big cowboy hat and a shirt lettered 'Bar Mitzvah Ranch' to sing 'Home on the Range' in Yiddish, it was his way of saying, 'I want to be an American.'
Joel Grey -
I'm about possibilities and about surprises and the life force.
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey -
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.'
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey
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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.
Joel Grey -
If you don't tell the whole truth about yourself, life is a ridiculous exercise.
Joel Grey -
I'd like to direct something at the Public.
Joel Grey -
My father was the one who used to stand up in the middle of a number to flutter his lips and make sputtering sounds into lyrics.
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey -
I spent 15 years of not being able to get a job creating a role on Broadway.
Joel Grey
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I really do enjoy everything I do. I just do so much.
Joel Grey -
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.
Joel Grey -
I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.
Joel Grey -
I fell so hard for the theater. I knew it was a place where you can sort out your life.
Joel Grey