A Quote by James Acaster

Every year in Edinburgh, I end up waiting behind the curtain about to go on stage, and I have a moment of thinking, 'No one's told me what to do with this show. I've done exactly what I wanted. This is the biggest arts festival in the world, and all these people have shown up. Aren't I lucky?' It really is amazing.
I did a production of 'Journey's End,' an RC Sherriff play about World War I, at the Edinburgh Festival. I was 18 and it was the first time that people I knew and loved and respected came up to me after the show and said, 'You know, you could really do this if you wanted to.'
Edinburgh is a world city, visited throughout the year for its beauty and history, but in August, it is the City of Hope. There is something very exciting and romantic about performers of all shapes and sizes, honing their stuff for the biggest arts festival in the world.
Every time I go out on a stage I consider myself very lucky. Because, in a time where people are economically thinking about what to go and see - so, when I am on a stage, and it doesn't matter where I am, that's my favorite show. I come home after and say "That was my favorite show".
Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky - we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe.
It's become something of a ritual - every year, Google publishes its year-end summary of what the world wants, and every year I complain about how shallow it is, given what Google really knows about what the world is up to.
For me, as an actor, one of the biggest fears on a TV show is getting stuck in something where you end up feeling like you're doing the same thing, every single year.
I've always had a passion for dancing, and I wasn't lucky enough to go to stage school, so when I got onto the show, I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I went into it just to have fun. The support was overwhelming, to say the least. It wasn't until the end of the show that I realised how much I really wanted to win it.
I was an adult and I was in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I was performing in this cave - they used to bury the plague victims in these caves underneath the streets of Edinburgh, when I got this weird cold sensation up my spine, it gave me this really weird feeling, and then I looked up and there was this white, sudden white shape, that just zapped from me and went straight to the light that was at the back of the room, and I just stopped cold and said to the audience, "Did you guys see that?" No one saw it.
I grew up thinking that I could be anything I wanted to be in this world because my mom told me that every single night.
I have been lucky, of course. Like, last year, if I went out, I'd have to fight to chat someone up. This year, I look exactly the same, which is really scruffy, and yet lots of people seem to have just changed their minds and decided I'm really sexy.
I moved on to the University of California, Berkley, coordinating interpreters for Deaf students at the university. The first year I was at Berkley, we brought in artists, performers, actors, and poets to create a Deaf arts festival. I did a lot of the interpreting for the stage performers. By the second year, I realized that I really liked producing arts festivals that had to do something with signing.
As a singer-songwriter who gets up on stage and sings about those things that make me vulnerable is an amazing experience. You get up on stage and effectively take your clothes off in front of thousands of people.
My entire life, people have told me that I couldn't do certain things. They told me I couldn't go to college. They told me I couldn't go to Yale, Georgetown, couldn't end up doing much on Capitol Hill. Couldn't be party chair. And my response has always been, 'Watch me.'
They did ask me to do 'Dancing With The Stars;' I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I'm a little past that stage.
My own work has been influenced by my years of teaching in that it's very hard for me to be cynical. When you're working with emerging, brilliant talent, you have to believe in the future. It makes me hungry, as a 65-year-old. I'm not thinking about the time that is behind me. I'm thinking of these people that I watch to catch up with and be in their company.
I feel very lucky to be part of this amazing show [Exorcist] with such an amazing cast of actors, with a really talented writer behind it all.
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