Top 118 Quotes & Sayings by Jonathan Groff - Page 2

When you get to really involve yourself with a piece and the other people, and you get to feel like it's a community and you're all building something together, it helps me to produce better work, I think.

Personally, for me in my life, I think every journey should be an ongoing journey, for anyone.

It's one thing to experience your Broadway debut alone, but to share it with an entire company was like summer camp or a college experience, where you were really growing up together.

A 'Looking' musical would completely bring me back to Broadway. I would come back in a second.

I bought the VHS of 'Into the Woods' at the Suncoast in the Park City Mall and watched it in the basement when I got home. And when it was over, I rewound it and immediately watched it again.

There's not a lot of gay programming on TV.

Whenever you get into a new environment, it's scary. You don't know the people; you're not really comfortable with the machine that the show is.

While I was in high school, I saw Sutton Foster in 'Thoroughly Modern Millie,' and she was the one that was most inspiring to me for sure. I saw 'Millie' 6 times in a span of two years or so.

I can't think of a better bonding experience than to be able to sit on stage and to watch your fellow performers perform on stage every night.

Trying to sound good at 10 A.M. is the worst.

With every character, the first thing I want to feel is empathy.

'Spring Awakening' was a discovery for all involved. None of us will ever have that specific sense of revelation in the same way - that is probably the thing I miss the most.

I was Mary Poppins for Halloween when I was 3, with lipstick and a carpetbag. And I was Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' in a production in my dad's barn.

I wish that I could take credit for the success of 'Frozen' and 'Hamilton.' But I just feel lucky to be in 'em.

I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, watching the Tony Awards on TV. Not just 'watching' the Tony Awards on TV - I would record them on a VHS tape and bring them in to school and show them to the other kids.

'Looking' is more than just a television show. It's contributing to the cultural conversation, and for me, those are the most exciting projects to be a part of.

I'm a singer who moves well.

I just don't know artistically - because I don't write my own music - I don't know artistically what an album would mean for me. I don't know what I would want to say with an album that would be unique to me - something that hasn't been done before. I'm just not sure what that is. But I'm absolutely open to it.

Dating can be painful, can be great, can be confusing, can be weird, but I don't do it online because I'm not really an online person.

I can say that I've become a David Fincher disciple. I have been completely turned.

I guess I think of myself as an actor before I think of myself as a gay actor.

When you're always onstage, you really have to focus on listening and reacting.

For me, there's nothing more valuable as an actor, or better way to learn, than getting to perform in front of a live audience, no matter where you are. Whether it's on Broadway, in Florida, or doing a tour.

I think about 'Will & Grace,' and I think about 'Modern Family,' and the way that being gay has become sort of middle America... in the way that they show gay people in their specific way.

I did 'Spring Awakening' on Broadway for about three years, and I did over 500 performances.

I've been fortunate that my career has developed through on-the-job training.

For Halloween, I've gone trick-or-treating as Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, and Robin Hood.

It's daunting, taking on the task of representing the gay community, because there are so many different facets and different schools of thought and behavior.

I wanted to work with Michael Mayer because I'd seen 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' six times.

In the first year in New York, I went to this amazing teacher named Jen Waldman. She does lots of different classes, but one of her classes was where you went and worked on a song. And suddenly I felt like an artist again, and because I had worked the whole song, when I went into the audition room, I could connect to something in the 16 bars.

I love the you-never-know-what's-going-to-happen aspect of doing concerts.

I love going to the movies.

I love interacting with an audience. I love just being myself in front of a crowd.

I believe in 'Backstage.' It changed my life.

Maybe someday I'll have a job where it haunts me or it's hard to move on.

I think the first Broadway show that I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' and that was in 5th or 6th grade. Our school would take bus trips up to see shows, and so it was on one of their bus trips that I got to see 'Beauty and the Beast.'

In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film, it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act, and you're in the audience.

There is really nothing like doing a play in New York.

Playing King George, for me, was a lesson in stillness and timing.

The difference between being in the closet and out of the closet as a gay man is such a huge shift. I feel so connected still to that 22-year-old, but the idea that I was not open with that part of my life - which I am now so open about - is sort of surreal.

Some people have the gift where they can just sing. I don't have the fail-safe voice, so it has to be something that I need to sing about.

I loved 'Weekend,' and it meant a lot to me when I saw it in the movie theater. I think 'Looking' feels more like that movie than any of those other shows, with a little more comedy thrown in than 'Weekend.' But it's certainly got the vibe and look and feeling of that movie.

When a piece of art gets really specific is usually when anybody can relate to it.

Obviously, gay projects play a special role for me because I am gay, so I'm doubly proud of them.

I was definitely planning to go to college, but I deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon to be in a non-equity tour of 'The Sound of Music.' But I made very little money in the tour, and college is really expensive, and I thought I'd never be able to pay off those loans.

When I was a senior in high school, I worked at a theater where they hired New York actors. And they told me about 'Backstage,' and so I got my school in Pennsylvania to subscribe. And there was an audition for a tour of 'The Sound of Music,' and I got the job. Deferred my admission to college just to go on tour.

When you get to really involve yourself with a piece [script] and the other people and you get to feel like it's a community and you're all building something together, it helps me to produce better work, I think. And there's an exhaustion that happens on a film set - an exhaustion that translates into a relaxation and helps me to live in the moment, in the performance I'm giving and what's happening around me.

I'm kind of whatever about nudity. Hopefully I wouldn't be a part of anything, whether I'm naked or not, that I didn't believe in. But I'm pretty comfortable being naked.

If I were to be back on Glee, I would like to spend some time with Lea Michele because I love her and we go way back.

My grandfather used to say 'Eat the biggest crabs first, that way you're always eating the biggest crabs.' In making a TV show, that means if you have a big funny or smart idea for an episode or a scene or a joke, go for it. Don't save it for another season or another episode, because you may not have the right time again. It's good advice for television, but truly stellar advice for eating crabs.

But at the same time, my parents always encouraged my brother and me to be happy with what we were doing. My parents were athletes in high school; my mom and my dad were the stars of the basketball team, but they never pushed my brother and me to be anything we didn't want to be.

In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act and you're in the audience

I love acting in the theater,but I'm fascinated with acting on film. If it's a film or a play or whatever, if the writing is good and you really feel passionate about it, you just can't lose. You'll grow from it. Whether it's a success or not is neither here nor there; you're going to grow as an artist from this experience.

At the end of the day, the end of the movie is sort of ambiguous - it's whatever you want it to be.

My mother's side of the family is Methodist, which is how I was raised. It was conservative in that I had strong values - sitting down and eating with the family every day, listening to authority and going to church every week and having perfect attendance at Sunday school.

I definitely prefer the single camera better. For me it's the simple fact that I enjoy working in front of an audience, but when you're trying to create a suspension of disbelief it's much harder to do in front of audience because they become a partner. Moreso than that, they become in charge of the timing. From the simple, mechanical fact that you have to hold for their laughter. The actual timing of the scene is in the hands of the audience. As a control freak, I don't enjoy that as much as the ability to be able to control it in an edit room.

I sort of have the belief that you work being your character out while you're working on it, or that's been my experience so far. I throw myself into it 100% and try to live in that world, and then when it's over, just sort of be able to leave it behind.

In theater, you're in charge of your performance, and at the end of the day you're the one who gets credit because you're in front of the audience doing it, and in film and TV it's the director who gets to decide when to cut to you on a line, which take he uses.