Ellen DeGeneres Quotes

Certainly early on, I kind of modeled myself after Steve Martin and Bill Murray. I would imitate them sometimes.

When I was a kid, I was a fan of comedy. I always loved Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Dave Letterman - not an actor, obviously, but I'm still impressed by his wit. I wanted to emulate them because they made me laugh.

I love funny people. I met and became friends with some of the funniest people ever. Gilda Radner, bless her soul; Martin Short; Dave Thomas; Eugene Levy.

I always was trying to make people laugh as a kid. I was a big fan of Carol Burnett and Gilda Radner. I watched them and I remember feeling as a child, when I heard the laughter they got, a little jealous that they made someone laugh like that.

I've always looked up to Amy Poehler and, obviously, people like Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Mel Brooks, and the 'Monty Python' guys.

My heroes were Gene Wilder, Steve Martin, and Martin Short.

Ever since I was a kid, I just loved those comedians on TV who would just have fun with the language.

There's a lot of very funny people I'd love to work with that I've never met, of course. I love Steve Martin and Jim Carrey.

Hey, I think comic actors are the best actors.

My ultimate is Peter Sellers - his ability to go broad and somehow humanize that and be hilarious at the same time. He was just relatable, real at the same time as insane. I find Ricky Gervais absolutely hilarious. Steve Martin is another hero of mine - he's a genius.

What I always say is that we're the illegitimate children of Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lewis.

I know I was influenced by Beatrice Lillie. I must have been.

When I used to see Rick Moranis do something, to me that was immediately funny. Or George Carlin or Martin Lawrence.

Comedy-wise, I think Chris Elliott is one of the funniest people.

I've studied Charlie Chaplin for years. I've studied Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, all of them. I don't play around. This is not a game.

Comedy is really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title.

But comedy I'd love to do as much as humanly possible.

I would love to do some more comedy. I would love to do some silliness. I would love to do some characters that have greater vulnerability.

Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.

I just want to be funny, I just want to do comedy.

I love comedy, and I think that's sort of what comes naturally to me.

Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama, and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing.

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

I haven't done much comedy; I would love to. I love doing dramatic roles, but I'd love to do comedy. I think it would be refreshing.

I am desperate to do a comedy now.