Rufus Wainwright Quotes

The only reason why you should do a film is because it creatively carbonates you and gets you going. If you're doing it for any other reason, you've lost sight of why you're acting in the first place.

You probably became a musicians because you're into it so stay that way. Don't believe that someone else has the golden ticket for you because they don't.

What drives me is to still feel creative and like I'm pushing myself as an artist.

Certainly in my appetite for more challenges, it's very much alive. I love comedy and it comes to me in a natural way.

As a dancer, I'd dance with broken toes. Just like acting, you compete with yourself and drive forward. That discipline helped in Hollywood.

It hasn't always been easy, but you get to a point where you're not doing the solo stuff with any kind of expectation in terms of commercial or a business outcome, you're doing it because you believe in this.

Hollywood forgets easily. I want to be fulfilled and challenged.

I've got to challenge myself more, and not listen to anybody else, and not listen to any media or bloggers, but just listen to myself. I've got to push myself. If I don't believe I'm growing, and I believe I'm just coasting, then I've got to get off the train. If I feel I'm growing, I have to keep going. It's a long marathon.

I never dreamed of being an actor, but I'm beginning to love it more and more because I like challenging myself. When I feel like I'm not learning or having fun anymore, then I'll stop.

The biggest thing for me is I don't want to let people down. At the same time I love things that scare me and challenge me. If your job doesn't do that and doesn't excite you there's no point in doing it.

The best advice I can give is to believe in yourself and to create new challenges no matter how far you get. Even if you think you earned it all or if you're considered the best in the world, keep challenging yourself because you're only as good as your last trick in the public's eye. But only do it because you love it. Don't do it because you think it's your ticket to fame or fortune. If that's the motivation and you reach any of those goals, you're not going to keep that passion.

The artist is very lucky, because in an art form that's spontaneous like jazz, that's when you really see your true self. And that's why, when I put down my instrument, that's when the challenge starts, because to learn how to be that kind of human being at that level that you are when you're playing - that's the key, that's the hard part.

Someone else who liked what I did might turn around and say, "She's reworking and rethinking everything. She could just be making blankets now, and be a lot wealthier." I'm actually making it difficult for myself. I wouldn't call it re-branding. If I get bored with my work, then other people will - it's that simple. And I'm not gonna get bored with what I'm doing. I'll struggle and fight and do new things to excite myself - and do it in my own sweet way.

Personally, I'd like as many children as I can pop out, I reckon. You come from a happy family; you want to create a happy family. And in the same breath, I'd like to be on stage at England's National Theatre, doing Miller and Chekhov. Give me a Sam Mendes/Tennessee Williams combination-that would be glorious. And to be making some Oscar-worthy movies with Scorsese. I'm always looking for the hard road. That way, you remain interested and interesting. Hopefully.

Ambition is only vanity ennobled.

I think the most important thing for me is a challenge. I'm not happy, creatively, unless I'm faced with a challenge. So, overcoming those challenges and really discovering characters that aren't like me helps me grow, as a person and as an artist.

Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. . . . Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug.

Somebody came and directed a show at my high school. I approached it with sort of the sensibility - "Oh, I know that music. I'm going to go audition." I ended up being in it and I sang and it was mind-altering - to me, to my parents, who had never heard me sing like that. It put a stop to everything else that I was doing - every sport that I played, every instrument, it was all dropped because nothing felt like that. I feel really lucky that I found my passion at that point. There are people who are adults who don't know what their passion is and go through life doing "a job."

I wanna make music that I feel proud of when I'm onstage, that I feel like I put my all into.

It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves -- I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing.

I'd been an actor my whole life, since I was a kid. And then, I quit for awhile and went to university. When I wanted to start acting again, I couldn't get a job, and that was really depressing. So, I realized, at that time, that I have to take responsibility for my own creativity.

The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write.

No alarm clock needed. My passion wakes me up.. !

Music is my life. It's inseparable from anything else that I do.

I just want to keep trying to surprise myself and I want to keep challenging myself.