Musical Theater Quotes

#1. I would love to have a varied career, like Hugh Jackman. He started in musical theater, then established himself in film, but he still does a lot of stage work. And he does it all beautifully.

Samantha Barks

#2. So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.

Trevor Nunn

#3. I'm not shutting doors on myself, in any way, within theater, musical theater, TV and film.

Lara Pulver

#4. If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.

Carlisle Floyd

#5. I'm a weird dichotomy of nerd, sports fan, and musical theater, so I'd love to do a superhero musical on Broadway. But all the good superheroes are claimed.

Taran Killam

#6. I come from musical theater, and a lot of musical theater is about accepting fantasy. I think it is more about just being open and accepting.

Amy Adams

#7. I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

Francis Ford Coppola

#8. The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.

Guy Pearce

#9. People say, 'What are your hobbies?' I say, 'I've been doing shows ever since I was a kid.' When I left college, all I wanted to be was a musical theater chick. I auditioned tons. It just didn't pan out.

Stephanie Courtney

#10. I have intentionally not pursued musical theater.

Katharine McPhee

#11. I was chomping at the bit to get my career started - so after I took all the theater courses at Brooklyn College I enrolled in a two year program at AMDA in the city (The American Musical Dramatic Academy) I was there for 6 months and loved it.

Didi Conn

#12. I started off in musical theater, yeah. It was one of my first jobs; it was in Spring Awakening in London, which was amazing.

Jamie Blackley

#13. I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that's what I did.

Gretchen Mol

#14. 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.

Rachel Bloom

#15. I know about lots of things that have nothing to do with being Asian, that you would never guess from looking at me. I know all about musical theater. I could go on 'Jeopardy!' and knock off the whole Broadway show tunes category. Also the whole Bible stories category.

B. D. Wong

#16. From a young age, I had done a lot of theater and musical theater. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but every time I was away from acting, I just felt very incomplete and a little stir crazy.

Alexander Koch

#17. Music is rhythm, and all theater is rhythm. It's about tempo and change and pulse, whether you're doing a verse play by Shakespeare or a musical.

Diane Paulus

#18. To survive in a profession like this, you have to have absolute discipline and commitment, and I did not quite have it for musical theater.

Richard C. Armitage

#19. I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger, and I really hope to get back there someday. I miss singing a lot. I listen to Broadway show tunes in my car and sing along to them.

Bridget Regan

#20. I love musical theater. That's what I started off to do when I was 7, and my first show was 'Peter Pan.'

David Hasselhoff

#21. At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.

Neil Tennant

#22. What's missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on.

Harold Prince

#23. When I first got to New York, all I did was musicals. After a few years I had to make a conscious choice to close the door on musicals, because I was getting pigeon-holed as a musical theater performer.

Tamara Tunie

#24. The truth is I love musical theater and always have.

Idina Menzel

#25. I double majored in English education and theater with a musical theater minor. Teaching is the only thing that makes me as happy as performing.

Rob McClure

#26. I loved 'White Christmas' for the music aspect. I was into musical theater.

Lana Parrilla

#27. Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.

Alex Flinn

#28. Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.

Betty Buckley

#29. I'm a comedian, and I have my share of anxiety and depression; so do most of my friends. My humor tends to lie in the juxtaposition of extreme lightness - I'm a huge musical-theater fan - and extreme darkness. And so I really like playing with those because that's how I feel.

Rachel Bloom

#30. I was probably singing before I could talk. Musical theater is my passion. If I could afford it, I would just do dinner theater and live a simple life.

Bethany Joy Lenz

#31. That whole world of musical theater was my first love. It's where I wanted to be when I was three years old.

Debra Messing

#32. I'm trying to bring a new generation into the musical theater and to create a new audience.

Jerry Herman

#33. It would be great to do theater one day, but I don't think I'd do a musical.

Alia Shawkat

#34. I've sung my whole life. I did a lot of musical theater growing up, I sing in the shower, sing in the car, sing everywhere really, on set at Chuck, all the time. I like it, and I've always felt like I've had a knack for it, or a talent for it, on some level, I don't know.

Zachary Levi

#35. In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.

Eli Roth

#36. I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to be onstage. I wanted to do musical theater, and from that I realized I was interested in plays. I never imagined myself on television. I was so lucky to be onstage my whole life.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

#37. I came from a really musical family. I studied classical piano because my grandparents were piano teachers, but started doing musical theater at age nine in Fresno, California, and went to a performing arts high school. That was my life.

Audra McDonald

#38. When I wanted to audition for a dinner-theater junior troupe in my hometown, I needed to have a piece of musical theater music to sing. I wasn't sure what I wanted to use. My mom and dad suggested that I sing 'Edelweiss' because I knew it from the music box.

Audra McDonald

#39. She spent her idle time conceiving of musicals that would never be. It was the only medium that could properly express our true madness and hypocrisy---our collective ability to sit in a theater watching lunatics sing nonsense while the world outside burns.

Dave Eggers

#40. I do think that it's better for a musical to live its life first because if you see it on the screen, would you like to go to the theater after that? Probably not. You've seen it. And that's the mystery of a musical that hasn't been filmed. You're bloody meant to go there and buy your ticket.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#41. I did a lot of theater growing up, and in college I was in the musical 'Chicago.'

Sarah Shahi

#42. 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

#43. People don't realize that I started in musical theater. That's where my roots are.

Katee Sackhoff

#44. A musical, like most religions, provides the audience or followers with a sense of belonging. Religious services, on the other hand, with their staged performances, invigorating songs, popular wisdom and shared experience, are almost a form of community theater.

Lisa Randall

#45. We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.

Harold Prince

#46. While I love musical theater, it wasn't the right fit for me. It's so competitive, and I was at such a disadvantage, having started performing when I was 17.

Jack Falahee

#47. The good news is that 'High School Musical' seems to be getting a lot of youngsters excited about theater.

Terry Teachout

#48. I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness - there's nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you've ever had.

Laura Benanti

#49. I've been very fortunate. I've been in theater, films, television, radio, tragedy, comedy, farce - I've been in a musical and in music halls, in pantomime. I was once ringmaster in a circus.

Donald Sinden

#50. I'm doing a play, a musical. The musical follows the Mamma Mia concept. It's my first LA theater project.

Tatyana Ali

#51. Musicals are my favorite. I'm a musical theater buff.

Rutina Wesley

#52. I have been taking voice and singing lessons since age 10 and originally got into it because I was really interested in musical theater. After writing my first couple of songs and performing at age 14, I knew that I really wanted to be a singer.

Daya

#53. I got started as an actress doing musical theater, and I always loved 'Grease' and 'West Side Story,' and all those kind of movies.

Sara Paxton

#54. Hillary Clinton said that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is engaged in 'theater.' Which explains the new strategy to defeat him: casting him as the lead in 'Spider-Man: the Musical.'

Jimmy Fallon

#55. Musical theater is an American genre. It started really, in America, as a combination of jazz and operetta; most of the great musical theater writers in the golden era are American. I think that to do a musical is a very American thing to me.

Rachel Bloom

#56. Look, I'm 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!

Nathan Lane

#57. In the theater, it's about taking time in a musical segment, a pause in a musical way and then moving on.

Marcia Gay Harden

#58. Singing is more of a hobby than really something I want to do for a career. But I love musical theater, so I'm hoping I can go back to it and do a role on Broadway for a few weeks. That would be a dream come true. My dream role would be Roxie in 'Chicago.'

Jillian Rose Reed

#59. I graduated with a degree in musical theater and no skill in anything else to make money; I wish I had gotten a massage therapy kit or something where I could have made my own money.

Kathleen Rose Perkins

#60. When you're in a show, all through rehearsals Tech Week hovers out there like a magical holy grail. In reality, Tech Week is always a train wreck of missed cues, forgotten lines, malfunctioning set pieces and short tempers.

S.M. Stevens

#61. I love music, singing, and playing piano (though I'm not very good). And I adore musical theater.

Aprilynne Pike

#62. It's funny ... musical theater is what paid my rent and kept me going for the longest time.

Bryan Batt

#63. I started in theatre. I went to the Boston Conservatory and majored in musical theater.

Rachael MacFarlane

#64. I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater.

Daniela Bobadilla

#65. I was a musical theater major at the University of Arizona. And I primarily trained with Marsha Bagwell. It was a classical program, so we did Chekov and Moliere and a lot of Shakespeare.

Christine Woods

#66. Up until I started on YouTube, my first love was musical theater.

Sam Tsui

#67. All I listened to until age 18 growing up was musical theater. I liked the escapism of it.

Rachel Bloom

#68. I always wanted to make an album, but I knew that I didn't want it to be a musical theater album. It's not that I don't love them - I own every musical theater album ever made - but it just didn't seem right for me.

Megan Hilty

#69. It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater ... it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content.

Kurt Weill

#70. I teach musical theater three days a week at the school that my wife and I graduated from.

Drew Lachey

#71. I'm a musical theater guy. That's where I came from. That's where I go whenever I have the chance. It's my first love.

Scott Bakula

#72. I've always been singing. Since day one. I started doing musical theater and you have to sing in musical theater and so that's where I got most of my training. So singing on stage, you just inevitably, when you're around other vocal artists, you get better at singing.

Zac Efron

#73. I wanted to focus on songs that I was inspired by growing up. I love so many of them from the last 100 years, but I really wanted, for my first step forward, to choose material that has inspired me and got me into the world of musical theater.

Josh Groban

#74. Music is my passion, singing, performing. I play piano and musical theater is my background.

Janel Parrish

#75. My interest in the theater led me to my first writing experience as an adult. My husband David wrote the music and lyrics and I wrote the book for a children's musical, 'Spacenapped' that was produced by a neighborhood theater in Brooklyn.

Gail Carson Levine

#76. I've learned that in the theater the story is everything. Every lyric, every line and every musical gesture has to propel the journey of a given character or the overall plot.

Trey Anastasio

#77. I started acting when I was 10, doing musical theater. I was a brunette at that time. I was always cast in all the exotic parts.

Loni Anderson

#78. Musical theater is one of my passions.

Patrick Wilson

#79. I went through a few phases of finding myself: I dabbled in musical theater, chess club, dance troupe, splatter-painting, school mascot (go Wildcats), babysitter, photojournalist, drill team girl, emo kid - and not one of them defined me, but every single one will always play a part in who I am.

Debby Ryan

#80. When I first moved to New York, all I did was musical theater. That's what I studied at Carnegie Mellon University.

Tamara Tunie

#81. But you know, I'm not 25 anymore, and I have always said musical theater in particular is a young person's game. It requires energy, mentally and physically, to do it.

Elaine Paige

#82. I used to watch a lot of musicals as a kid. Musical movies, not so much musical theater.

Samuel Larsen

#83. I've always been interested in music. In high school, I did a lot of musical theater, and I loved it.

Rosanna Pansino

#84. If there is a Busta Rhymes of musical theater, it probably is Mandy Patinkin.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

#85. I was really sporty and loved singing. I started off doing musical theater. I left university to go to drama school. So I was a bit of a black sheep.

Sophie Cookson

#86. I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!

Zac Efron

#87. The first few weeks of school were always surreal, like you landed on an alien planet with strange teachers and unfamiliar classrooms, even though the lockers and cafeteria seemed familiar.

S.M. Stevens

#88. I was a ballet dancer and that kind of bled into musical theater. I was constantly in rehearsal for one thing or another.

Jennifer Garner

#89. I love hip-hop; I love Sleigh Bells. I also love classical music and musical theater.

Tatiana Maslany

#90. I like to originate new roles and characters for musical theater.

Idina Menzel

#91. I would love to be in musical theater and be on Broadway. If someone were to offer me a position to do something like that, I wouldnt pass it down. Im a huge fan of musicals and I really want to do that.

Michelle Branch

#92. When I was in high school, I was a bad singer. I mean, all my early acting was musical theater, and my first ever show was 'Jesus Christ Superstar.' Everyone's familiar with it. I played priest number 3 and sang so out of tune that it's not even funny.

Sam Claflin

#93. The C+ amps is vintage at this point, and it definitely has a certain sound to it. I wanted something that was going to keep Dream Theater in more of a current musical landscape, as far as being the producer and producing the type of album I wanted to hear.

John Petrucci

#94. I'm not into music - the only music I like is musical theater, but I have every Ween album.

Jesse Eisenberg

#95. I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw

#96. I love singing! I was a musical theater girl in high school. We were always singing and dancing around, and just doing little community theaters and high school musicals. Then, when I got to NYU, I focused more on drama.

Katie Lowes

#97. I'll always be an actor first. I grew up doing musical theater, so music and acting, to me, have always gone hand in hand. I'm going to be an actor first because it's my career, but music will always be a part of me.

Jon Huertas

#98. I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.

Harold Prince

#99. I'm a musical theater aficionado, a.k.a. loser.

Paulo Costanzo

#100. As an actor, you generally don't get to choose what projects you are part of, so I've been very fortunate that 'The Book of Mormon' was something I got to be part of. I don't want to be lofty, but it was groundbreaking, in many ways, for musical theater, so that was really thrilling to be part of.

Andrew Rannells