Top 100 Comedy Play Quotes
#1. In college I was one of six males who auditioned for five male roles in a comedy play. I was the one rejected. At that moment I made up my mind never to place myself at the mercy of some pompous, goateed, black-turtleneck-shirted "should I yay him or nay him?" pantywaist ever again.
Emo Philips
#2. Did I play my role well? If so, then applause, because the comedy is finished!
Augustus
#3. That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?
John Osborne
#4. In order for comedy to be funny you have to play the truth of the moment. But if you're not being completely truthful to the basis of the character, its not going to be funny.
Stephen Root
#5. Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.
Burt Ward
#6. Sometimes with a comedy it's just having the instinct of how real you play it and what level you want it.
Robin Williams
#7. There's quite an overlap between musicians - especially drummers - who have an affection and a proclivity towards comedy and comedians who fantasize about being in a band. And a lot of comics play instruments.
David Cross
#8. I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience.
Simon McBurney
#9. I don't just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett - those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.
Naturi Naughton
#10. As someone who's been doing a lot of classical theater recently, I loved the idea of getting to run around in Steven Alan, and not be in a corset and a wig, and not have a dialect, and get to be in a 90-minute play with no intermission, and get to do real comedy.
Lily Rabe
#11. Check my riddle, and I'll let you play my fiddle.
Zack Love
#12. Yes, Trina. Really, I'll show up to help you. Really, I'll bring a friend. Really, I'm not a total dick. I just play one on TV.
Lisa Brown Roberts
#13. One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I write. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have wanted to translate it. There are no one-liners. It's much more a truthful comedy than a play of dazzling wit.
Tom Stoppard
#14. In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.
Steve Martin
#15. Sit the comedy out, and that done, when the Play's at an end, let the Curtain fall down.
Thomas Flatman
#16. Whether that's an action film or a comedy or a drama or anything in between, I'm willing to prove that I can play with the big boys.
Sasha Grey
#17. I was in the play 'Fat Pig in the West End,' which is a comedy but has dramatic moments.
Robert Webb
#18. I've done some really weird gigs. The ones where no one turned up - they're probably not the interesting ones to talk about. I played some pretty random ones in L.A. I signed to play all-R&B nights or an all-comedy night where I'd be the only white person there. They were fun.
Ed Sheeran
#19. Hosting 'SNL' was something I'd always wanted to do. The show allowed me to play to my strengths - mixing music with comedy seemed like a way into that world.
Justin Timberlake
#20. I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.
Jenna Fischer
#21. I love Buster Keaton and I love physical comedy when it's done in an emotionally understated way. I just like to play it, and I need the attention.
Demetri Martin
#22. The Comedy Bar is an intimate club, which I prefer. I refuse to play theatres, because large empty spaces make me nervous, and I don't enjoy the echo. I'm no sell out. Literally.
Andy Kindler
#23. Play your part in the comedy, but don't identify yourself with your role.
Wei Wu Wei
#24. I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.
Olivia Williams
#25. When I first started acting, I started in opera and had a great desire to play grand, tragic characters. I got sidetracked in musical theater and ended up doing a lot of comedy.
Leslie Easterbrook
#26. I love to play strippers and to imitate them. I love using that idea for comedy, but the idea of actually going there? I feel like we all need to be better than that. That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that.
Tina Fey
#27. I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do.
Jo Brand
#28. I've been lucky enough to play many different roles from darker characters to family orientated shows to comedy.
Andrew-Lee Potts
#29. I would like to play an average guy. I would have loved to play opposite John Candy in a movie. That was my dream for a long time, and sadly, now I can never realize that. But I'd like to do comedy.
Warwick Davis
#30. Although I love all genres, I really love to play in two main arenas: Comedy and Thriller/Horror. In either genre I love playing flawed, layered characters that are actively fighting to achieve something in the story.
Kyle Cassie
#31. In the West, audiences think I am a stereotyped action star, or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong, I did a lot of comedy, many dramatic films, and most of all, romantic roles, lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero.
Chow Yun-Fat
#32. If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.
Tom Hiddleston
#33. I think the best comedic actors don't play it for comedy, they play it for reality. Then you find it funny because it's real. Playing the genre is the worst thing you can do - it's embarrassing.
Zooey Deschanel
#35. So what do you do for sex? Just one-night stands? Or do you play a lot of five-on-one?
Clarissa
Tiffany Snow
#36. I felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.
Eddie Izzard
#37. All I knew is that I loved movies and comedy and TV, and I wanted to perform. I made a bunch of shorts and movies in college, and that was always fun too. I directed some plays in college. It was taking it all in and trying to immerse myself in as much of it as possible.
Ed Helms
#38. My roles in comedies from 'Austin Powers' to 'Tommy Boy' to 'Wayne's World,' were sort of comedic 'straight man' parts. My character on 'Parks & Recreation' is the comic relief in a comedy. To play a character that appears strictly for laughs is sort of new for me and really fun.
Rob Lowe
#39. There's good action stars. I'm a bad-guy action star. What disappoints me is when you all of a sudden you get a good action star and then he wants to play a comedy with kids, you know? That upsets me, and that's not being true to your fans.
Vinnie Jones
#40. When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.
Dean Norris
#41. Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?
Desiderius Erasmus
#42. My comedy does not come from a place of deep cynicism, and I tend to play characters who are naive in some way.
Anna Faris
#43. God always comes up with a third act twist
and we won't know until we die whether the play was a comedy or a tragedy.
Joan Rivers
#44. In television, and especially in a situation comedy, you kind of play yourself, or at least the essence of yourself.
Shelley Long
#45. Movies serve many purposes, and I've visited many of those genres, from the most light, frivolous comedy that is just trying to make you laugh, to movies that explore the most complicated side of the human soul. As an actor, I play all of those things, and I still like it.
Antonio Banderas
#46. I've never been that guy who says, 'Ooh, I have to play King Lear'. First off, that'd be a disaster anyway. I tend to read something and see who's involved, and then know I want to be part of it. But I don't think I'm through with comedy. I still love to make people laugh.
Ted Danson
#47. There are things we could do like let Brad Dourif play Charles Lee Ray's brother or father , something like that, but I think any of those options would've been squarely in the horror-comedy realm.
David Kirschner
#48. Optimist: someone who isn't sure whether life is a tragedy or a comedy but is tickled silly just to be in the play.
Robert Breault
#49. I thought people would ask me really personal questions because I've shown more of myself, but it's a comedy, and people understand that it's a game we play.
Charlotte Gainsbourg
#50. Yes, they allowed us to play around a lot because, like we said, the director's such a good comedy director.
Kevin McDonald
#51. There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.
Washington Irving
#52. If you decide to do comedy that involves risk, risk means risk, and you can't complain of flesh wounds if you sit down at the table to play.
Sarah Silverman
#53. I don't play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don't have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.
Penelope Cruz
#54. You can bring truth to anything, whether it's a dance movie or an incredibly poignant indie drama or a really broad comedy. As long as you show up to play, I don't think you can go wrong.
Josh Peck
#55. What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.
Denis Diderot
#56. It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor.
John Noble
#57. Did you happen to catch the film I did between 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Kong?' It was a nice little Jennifer Garner comedy, '13 Going on 30,' and I play her boss. In my big scene, I get to moonwalk - pretty well, I thought - to Michael Jackson.
Andy Serkis
#58. I like to play different types roles, but I'd like to do a comedy next.
Jonny Lee Miller
#59. I always think a good sports movie is emblematic in the same way that a great Greek tragedy really has a certain kind of structure, or a Shakespearean play if you're looking at a comedy or a tragedy, is that these are the heights and depths of human emotion.
Carla Gugino
#60. Catechism.3. Recovery of health. Your honour's players hearing your amendment,Are come to play a pleasant comedy.Shakesp.Tam. Shrew.
Samuel Johnson
#61. I love doing comedy, and I don't get a chance to much. I get to play lots of serious people, and killers, and people with a lot of ... sheriffs. Good people and bad people, but lots of drama, and to get a chance to be genuinely silly is a great treat for me.
William Sadler
#62. It's hard to really get that excited about movies. Think about it like this: how many good comedy movies come out a year? Maybe one or two? And then, in those movies, what are the chances that there's a character that I'm the best fit to play? It's really small!
Aziz Ansari
#63. Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.
Peter Shaffer
#64. One of the things that makes any good entertainment, whether it's a play, drama, comedy, television, film, whatever, is that you feel a certain amount of spontaneity.
Glenn Howerton
#65. Above all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of the play.
Paul Watzlawick
#67. I would love to play the lead in a big romantic comedy. That's definitely a dream of mine.
Rosamund Pike
#68. I try to play serious scenes a little funny and the comedy a little serious.
Uzo Aduba
#69. I really enjoyed multicamera comedy. You film in front of a live audience, and it's kind of the best of both worlds. It's like doing a one-act play every week, but if you screw your lines up, you get to do it over.
Alan Ruck
#70. Most of my comedy is accidental, I would say. If I don't know what the joke is, I'm going to play it better than if I do.
Aya Cash
#71. I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it's essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it's a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.
Will Ferrell
#72. Anything has a rhythm to it, comedy or drama. There has to be a musicality to it. And everybody can't play the same instrument, ideally. But I think that we all have the same comedic tendencies, and that's why it works. We all sort of agree with what's funny.
Bradley Cooper
#73. Have four things going. I have stand-up comedy, two television shows and I'm working on a play. I like to work, and I fear that something could fall through. You know what they say: 'The show must go off.'
Joy Behar
#74. Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside.
Ernst Lubitsch
#75. I do miss the rhythms of comedy. And I've never been able to perform very well without an audience. The sitcoms I've done had them. It was like doing a little play.
Dick Van Dyke
#76. I've always been taught to just play the truth of the situation. If comedy comes out of that, or drama, whatever comes out of it, at least I'm playing the truth of the moment-to-moment reality.
Ving Rhames
#77. I grew up in a time when women didn't really do comedy. You had to be homely, overweight, an old maid, all that. You had to play a stereotype, because very attractive women were not supposed to be funny - because it's powerful; it's a threat.
Lily Tomlin
#78. One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.
Elbert Hubbard
#79. Fate cast me to play the role of an ugly duckling with no promise of swanning ... I have played my life as a comedy rather than the tragedy many would have made of it.
Marie Dressler
#80. There's a reason Tony Stark makes fun of 'Thor,' and mentions 'Shakespeare' in the park in 'The Avengers.' It's great to play high drama and comedy alongside a modern story.
Joss Whedon
#81. I don't do comedy. I think if a situation is funny you just play it for real and if it's funny, it's funny.
Morgan Freeman
#82. I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.
Salman Rushdie
#83. My hopes and aspirations haven't changed since I started in this business. They've been to be able to play drama, to be able to play comedy, to be able to play leading men, and to be able to play character roles. I have no other aspirations in this regard.
Rob Lowe
#84. I don't want to play earnest. I'd rather play somebody who's kind of sleazy. It's much more fun, especially in a comedy. You don't want to be some earnest guy who's just trying to do the right thing but can't. I want to be doing the wrong thing intentionally.
Jack Coleman
#85. What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious.
Luigi Pirandello
#86. Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes and troubles, and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play.
Bram Stoker
#87. My years on 'SNL' had reconfirmed that what I do best is play for a sort of edgy comedy.
Paul Shaffer
#88. I'd love to do a comedy like 'Bridesmaids;' I think that would be so fun. I would play the Kristen Wiig character.
Emma Roberts
#89. I would love to play a normal human being with a little bit of a comedic bend that had a love interest. I would love to explore comedy, like a half-hour kind of single-camera comedy. I think that would kind of suit me best.
Reggie Lee
#90. I like to play characters that get to do it all - to have a bit of comedy here and a bit of pathos here and a bit of suspense here, that's what's fun.
Michael Shannon
#92. Play the age as comedy if you want to get away with murder.
James Agee
#93. I'm gonna play this game the way I want to. It might be serious, it might be a comedy, it might be a dramedy, it might be variety, it might be a talk show, whatever. There's no box.
Mo'Nique
#94. I try to play the stiff, as much as I can, and play it dry, which is sometimes hard for me. My problem with comedy is to want to clown it up, but she's the funny one. Those are her jokes, not mine. For me, it's a lot of not doing anything. I just don't want to muck it up.
John Cho
#95. We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.
Max Hastings
#96. God writes a lot of comedy ... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.
Garrison Keillor
#97. It's easier to play a dim character, for me, because I have a natural bent for comedy. It's not intrinsic for me to be crafty, so I would have to go outside for a source of origin. I think of myself as pretty dim.
Stephen Root
#98. I had just finished working on a play, and we started to talk to the 'Happy Endings' folks. There was interest from both sides, which was exciting, because I thought it was very fresh. Adam Pally's just a really funny, talented dude. I thought I'd be great to jump on and do some comedy.
James Wolk
#99. I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy.
Rowan Atkinson
#100. With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.
Penelope Keith
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