I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.
— Joel Grey
For me to take a role, I read a script, and I think, 'Wow, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I want to try.'
I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.
I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.
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.
'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.
My grandparents from the old country, Latvia, were all musical on my father's side.
There's a lot going on in the world that's very disturbing: rewriting the Holocaust; pseudo-historians rewriting history itself. And we're dealing with a terrorist mentality that involves whole nations.
My father was a musician and wanted me to study piano. I had no interest.
Satisfying as that 'Cabaret' role was, it is not the only thing I do. But Hollywood is somewhat limited in its perspective about what it is you do or don't do.
I was totally delighted, interested in, and amused by my stint on 'Voyager.'
I don't like to bad-mouth other shows, but I was very disturbed after seeing 'Starlight Express.' It had very little to do with musical comedy as I know it. It had to do with sound and spectacle and records and technology and amplification.
I never learned to speak Yiddish, ever.
I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.
I always wanted children, to be a dad. That was as important to me as being an actor.
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.
I've always wanted to do, oddly enough, a live variety show, but only with a live audience.
My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.
I always sort of saw myself as different from a musician.
Larry Hagman and I are very old friends.
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.
I really didn't feel that my motion picture career was going the way I wanted it to go.
You can be taking two steps forward as an actor, but if a movie doesn't make money, you might as well be taking two steps backwards. It's all about economics.
I am concerned about the musical theater, selfishly, because I love it.
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.
Being at the Play House, the only way I could see my life was that I would be an actor in a company, doing a lead role one week, a small part the next. That's what I thought I was going to be.
I came to realize, along with being attracted to girls, I had similar feelings for boys.
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.'
There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.
All the things you do, even the shows that don't work, are as much work, but you learn more from the things that are difficult.
I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.
When I was eight, I went to the theatre, and I remember looking at the stage afterward and pointing and saying, 'I want to do that.' I don't think that's ever changed.
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.
Theater is the most important thing in life for me.
I'm always interested in the challenge of doing something new.
It can take me forever to choose the right coffee cup in the morning. And it does make a difference!
