Top 95 Quotes & Sayings by Leslie Odom, Jr.
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Leslie Odom, Jr..
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I've been involved with 'Hamilton' for about two and a half years. I've learned so much. I came into it a young man. Now I've dropped the 'young.'
I know what it's like to be ignored; when I got to L.A., I longed for somebody who looked like me to show me the ropes.
It is said an artist spends their whole life trying to get to the place where their heart was first opened up. 'Rent' was that place for me.
I think it was, my parents got me a karaoke machine when I was about 9 years old. Even before that, they got me a tape recorder that I used to walk around my life with. And there was something about recording and then hearing myself back.
I think I spent most of my childhood, and my early years as a performer, in student mode. And I think that's OK - I mean, it led me to where I am.
I've been fortunate in my life. It hasn't been easy, but there has been a focus on the positive, and it has reverberated. Eventually, the outlook mirrors itself back to you in the friends you have, in the partner that you choose.
None of us get to divorce ourselves from the world. We walk into the theater and bring all of our grief and our pain and our joy with us.
'Hamilton' has restored my faith in theater.
I've spent a long time learning my way around a stage as an actor, but this I don't know as well. Humbly, I'm excited to get with a band and perform regularly as an artist and see what I can learn and how I can grow in that space.
I know it's hard for people to imagine a time when 'Hamilton' wasn't 'Hamilton,' but for years, it was just this little thing that I was telling people about that didn't make any sense to anybody as I was describing it. But I loved it.
I want to know that I'm gonna knock 'em dead every night.
You gotta prove yourself. I'm not above that. I will never be above that. Bring it!
Oh, Alexander Hamilton fell short of his best self every now and again, and he still managed to do these wonderful things - well, so do I. So what am I capable of?
It's not about doing something that's as big as 'Hamilton.' That may never happen again, and that's okay.
When I step on the stage and sing 'Wait for It,' I'm singing that for everybody. I don't mean I'm singing it for them; I mean, you are their voice.
Making $1,260 a week at 17 years old? That was a million dollars a week to me!
You can't judge the people that you play anyway; you leave that for somebody else to do.
We want to pull out songs from the American song book, and we want to make them palatable for a modern audience.
I've realized along the way that a lot of things that I do as a performer are about waiting for somebody to write something for me or develop something for me, but music, music was the thing that I don't have to wait for anybody's permission to do.
Josh Gad was in my class. Katy Mixon. Griffin Matthews. Josh Groban - he ended up leaving to become a huge star, but he was in our class in freshman year. I remember Josh was this nerdy kid in a turtleneck with a voice from heaven.
We don't get to get swept up, because we have to start over every day at 8 o'clock.
I'm in no way running from 'Hamilton' or its success or these beautiful songs that I've been blessed to be able to be the one to introduce them. I certainly won't be the last to sing them, but to be the first, I feel very lucky.
The only reason to keep talking about history is if you are juxtaposing it with the world that we live in today, if you are learning something about our world by looking at the way they shaped their world.
All I try to do is put as many colors as I can on the canvas every night.
I remember when I was in 'Rent,' Daphne Rubin-Vega threw a party. At the time, she had a loft in TriBeCa, and the elevator opened right into her apartment. I was like, 'I've never seen anything like that.' I didn't know it was possible.
My dad was always in sales. My mom had a heart for the ages. Worked in recreation, doing rehabilitation in nursing homes. Very nice, practical folks who were very proud of me but had no inclination toward the stage in any way.
Nothing lasts forever in my profession.
At 14, 15 years old, I started reading 'Backstage' regularly. Eventually, I got enough courage to look at the auditions section.
If you're an open channel when you're onstage, if you're just a vessel, things are going to come out that are stored away deep in your DNA.
To get even realer with you for a second, as a black actor, as a performer of color, I don't know how many more roles like Aaron Burr are gonna come along for me.
I was a good student; I was a good boy. I got A's, and I did all the papers right.
That was the bat signal for me - 'Rent' changed my life. It took me years before I got beyond that show.
I think for a lot of us, you know, what 'Hamilton' gave us the opportunity to, what it gave me the opportunity to do, was to go, 'Here's what I've learned in 35 years.'
Until you make a name for yourself, they're like, 'Be a little more Denzel,' 'Be a little more Wesley Snipes.'
I don't have any control over the offers that are going to come to me or not come to me. But I can't go backward, and so that's what's tricky.
I know what not being able to pay your bills feels like real well... I know that way better than a room full of beautiful people and Tony awards and Grammy awards.
You go see a great production of 'Romeo and Juliet,' where those kids are full of life and love, you hope and forget.
I've done a lot of translation in TV, and I can do it. I'm trained to do it. I know how to inject a certain amount of my naturalness into that and where I come from into those things, but it helps if somebody's writing with my experience in mind.
If I'm allowed it, I'm really looking forward to a little time on the couch and a little time on a beach in Brazil.
When I see the black experience - there's not one, but it is specific, and you can't ignore it.
You must be an artist and a citizen of the world. You must speak to this stuff that's happening. You must do what you can to shine a light on it, help people through it.
The record company felt wisely that we should get something out before I left 'Hamilton' or around awards time, and that deadline was not easy.
I know what feeling broke feels like real well. I know that real well.
I feel like every night, when you see a really good production of 'Romeo and Juliet' or something, you should hope that it ends differently. That's why we watch our favorite movies again and again.
It's about polarization. You're trying to stir up something in your audience.
I got my Equity Card with my Broadway debut when I did 'Rent.' I was in high school, and I came to New York to do that show.
What goes up must come down; I'm not going to be in 'Hamilton' forever. Everything I work on won't have this kind of success.
You hear a song like 'Wait For It,' you hear a song like 'Dear Theodosia' - if you get one of those songs in a musical - one - it's worth dropping everything to sing that one song.
I had no vision of me being a part of that show ever. But I was committed to being the first super-fan of 'The Hamilton Mixtape' that there ever was. I was in love with this thing.
I think art, at its best, happens on a conscious and a subconscious level.
'Rent' opened up my heart, my senses. I was never the same. I hadn't been back in that place in the same way since. 'Hamilton' put me back in that place.
I grew up in Philadelphia.
Sometimes I think of creativity or art as this well that we all draw from.
For most of your career, what you're trying to do is to step into other people's shoes.
I wanted to make an album that was hopeful and encouraging and inspiring. That was the goal.
None of us wants to be judged by our worst act on our worst day, and we consistently judge Burr for that. He was not a perfect man, but he's not a villain. He's a dude, just a guy.
I studied at Carnegie Mellon. I went there with a bunch of really, really talented kids.
I grew up in the Canaan Baptist Church.
I have a great foundation, a great training foundation. But it took me a long time to let the training go.
When we go and cheer Cynthia Erivo on in 'The Color Purple,' it's because we've elected her to be our voice. She sings 'I'm Here' for all of us.
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