Kelli O'Hara Quotes

I love characters songs and I love to fit into a story. I love singing through a character's journey.

What is important to me as an actor is that, even if I have to spread my arms, take my shirt off on a mountain top with my heroine in a chiffon sari, it still has to be me and my twist or my funny take on it.

In all my movies, there's always a kind of heartfelt element, to be able to do a drama and to be able to spend more time in the emotional stuff with no pressure to get back to the funny that's very liberating for me.

Acting is a total physical, emotional sensation.

I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.

I loved 'Funny Lady' for whatever reason. People say they didn't know I could sing and dance. Well, nobody ever asks me - it's always, 'Punch this guy.'

I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.

I kind of did this thing in high school, a spoof of 'Sweeney Todd' called 'Shirley Todd,' and I had a great time doing that.

I love musical theater so much. When done right, I think comedy songs can be the most efficient form of joke delivery. Songs can be the most efficient and the best forms of conveying emotion. Music is universal. It's worldwide.

It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence.

Sometimes you can take those dramatic roles and maybe interject a little humor into them, and I think the reverse also works.

A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.

When you're trying to do a traditional book musical like 'Book of Mormon,' it's always nice to have characters that could very naturally break into song, and its good to pick a subject matter that allows that to happen in a way that doesn't disarm the audience.

Even in my comedies, I don't take anger as a joke. I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it. One of the things I like about a character: I always think it's fascinating when a character can turn on a dime and go from one emotion to another. I like watching that.

Musicals allow a depth of emotion that you don't get in another form of acting, the chord changes, the lyrics really affect people, so that in two hours, you've forgotten about things.

If you wanted John Gielgud to cry, he could say, 'Which eye?'

It's a wonderful thing to watch an actor just act.

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.

When acting, I can wear another person's clothes and act out the attractiveness of a particular character, which is very interesting for me. Singing is something I love as well.

Luckily, neither in my Tamil nor in my Telugu movies do I have roles that require exaggerated emoting.

When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.

Acting is something I've always loved and enjoyed.

We have a very physical performance art. A lot of times, when you want to achieve a certain emotion, you have to use professional wrestling ingredients, which are moves or a sequence of moves.

'Cabaret' was one of the first pieces of musical theater I saw that showed the possibilities of what musical theater can do.

The thing about 'Next to Normal' is that it really is an ensemble piece for six actors. They are all asked to do very important things in the show, and I think all six are equal in terms of telling the story.