I've been playing in L.A. for a long time through college and pros, just to be ready. It's different out here.
'The Voice' has lots of singers who fit the 'Idol' mold of young, innocent ingenues with psycho stage moms. But it also has long-suffering adult pros, with a whiff of thirtysomething despair in their voices. That adds an edge of realness.
I feel like something I've wanted to do for a really long time, in a feature film or anything, is playing a rocker. Somewhere where I can be on a stage and have a guitar or a microphone and just kind of jam out.
After I retired, it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it.
When you start anything new for the fist time, always know why you’re doing it and what you hope to accomplish as a result. Weigh out the pros and cons and check in with your heart to see if it is something worth pursuing. Life is extremely short, and you should be doing the things that give you the most fulfillment.
Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard. Learn from the pros, observe them, seek them out as mentors and partners. But remember that even the pros may have leveled out in terms of their learning and skills. Sometimes even the pros can become complacent and lazy.
Playing for 14 years definitely took its toll mentally. I decided when I was playing my last season that when I retired from football I would never go back into it, and I've never regretted that decision.
We're more of a touring band than we are anything else, because it kind of all makes sense when we're on the stage. For us, success in America would be having as many people come to see us as they do in the UK and Europe, and I think anything that would surpass that would just be a surprise to us.
Democracy is just a word. You have to give it meaning. The US is not a democracy. Most Americans do not vote. We haven't had a real choice for a long, long time now. Wealth rules. Corporations rule. The US is a plutocracy - government by wealthy people. Certain people control multinational corporations. You couldn't get elected in the US without lots of money.
If, after five years, I hadn't had anything published, I was just going to forget it and go back to TV full-time until I retired or they put me out to pasture.
I don't do anything specific for the stage. I'm just myself. I can't stand still for five seconds. I'm normally quite active, so that just comes out on stage. If I see people react to me and my music, I just have to give back and express myself.
I love Back Stage. I have lots of theater friends and actors who depend on Back Stage.
It's not something to complain about, but just the major difference between college and the pros is that in college you're guaranteed four to five years so long as you don't do anything criminally and in the pros you're guaranteed one day because you can be cut the next.
For a long time, I didn't give anything my all. I was so afraid that I'd be crap, so I held myself back.
Normally classical music is set up so you have professionals on a stage and a bunch of audience - it's us versus them. You spend your entire time as an audience member looking at the back of the conductor so you're already aware of a certain kind of hierarchy when you are there: there are people who can do it, who are on stage, and you aren't on stage so you can't do it. There's also a conductor who is telling the people who are onstage exactly what to do and when to do it and so you know that person is more important than the people on stage.
In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as an actor. I started out doing movies and theater and stuff, but then I had a terrible problem with stage fright as an actor on stage, and I quit stage acting for a long, long time.