Jeffrey Tambor Quotes

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

Yes, I mean, There's nothing like it. There is an added sense of pressure because of that, but there's also nothing like the thrill you get being in the same space with that audience right there and then. And when you do it, it's over.

When I used to work in television, a tip was rather than looking down the barrel of the camera and imagine people watching, which is terrifying, imagine your most discerning friend observing you, and imagine you're just talking to them.

Stand up is the most stressful, and hosting and presenting a show has its own stresses, because you've got an audience which you've got to entertain as well as an audience at home.

Very few people know what it's like being onstage looking out at a sea of bodies.

I never experienced getting nervous on stage. I think I was most comfortable there.

If you're up there [on stage] thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen.So trying to learn how to overcome those - which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together.

All I kept thinking about was, "Man, he's so relaxed onstage! I'm never going to be that relaxed! I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera."

We wanted to impress the crowd so much. The city has done so much for us and welcomed us right in, and we just wanted to give them a good show and show them that we're going to play for them. I think guys just had a little bit of jitters.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit.

I think there are so many little hurdles and impediments with stand-up that you'd need to have this insane desire to do it if you didn't have something that clicked right away.

It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience.

When you go on a stage, before you go on a stage you're really scared and you're really frightened. You don't know what to do. "Why did I say yes to this?" But once you're on the stage you think, "Okay."

That was an interesting thing I learned I think the first time I did a late night show or something. It was like, "Oh, this is for the camera and a performance that you're giving to the people at home."

I do get nervous to act, it kind of depends on what it is really.

Whenever I'm onstage, I try my best not to think that I'm performing. It's simply another part of my day.

I wouldn't want to try to make a living as an actor. I think actors... I give them a lot of credit for what they go through, but putting myself on the line like that would make me crazy.

Perform as many times as you can in front of people you don't know.

I haven't found a comfortable place onstage. I'm sure it doesn't have to be comfortable, but I'm very nervous, so I don't enjoy myself.

The live aspect is so thrilling, I get nervous again. It's like going on stage.

Once the cameras rolling or the audience is in the seats, I'm on. I can't help it. I go into a trance.

Being on TV in front of people is a lot different than sitting in a dark room with a microphone. When I had my radio show, I was on four hours a day for 20-something years. If you put a live microphone in front of Mother Teresa for that amount of time, she'd piss somebody off.

There's nothing more vulnerable than just standing in front of a thousand people, or ten thousand people, and doing your best to entertain them, touch them in some way.