A Quote by Martha Kelly

I never went on auditions because I would be terrible at it, so I just did stand-up. — © Martha Kelly
I never went on auditions because I would be terrible at it, so I just did stand-up.
First they went after the Communists, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Communist. Then they went after the homosexuals and infirm, and I did not stand up, because I was neither. Then they went after the Jews, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Jew. Then they went after the Catholics, and I did not stand up, because I was Protestant. Finally, they went after me, and there was no one left to stand up for me.
A lot of improvisers mistakenly assume stand-up is awful, because there are a lot of stand-ups in the world that did not appeal to me. It was so easy to make a blanket statement when I was improvising only: 'Stand-up's terrible.' It's so ignorant and stupid to do that. But it's easy to do that. So that's where I came from.
Derek Brunson's stand up is horrible, I'm sorry. The guy is a good fighter but his stand up is just terrible. He's an amateur fighter stand up wise.
My dad was clear that it was important to start the journey from scratch and give auditions. I used to stand in long queues, where a hundred people would stand ahead of me... One thing I knew, that I must be focused on whatever I did. And that helped me to keep striving.
I'm grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over. I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. That's why they're okay stand-ups, but they're never going to be great, because they don't have that presence. They never built those muscles up.
I did a terrible television pilot that was so badly written and dumb that it became a turning point for me and I decided that I would never accept a job just because I needed the money.
If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don't know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.
No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.
Well in the history of the See's Candy Company they always say, "I never did it before, and I'm never going to do it again." And we cashier them. It would be evil not to, because terrible behavior spreads.
I did so many interviews and auditions for films, and it was just zilch. Nothing I did impressed anybody! I could just feel it. It was always, 'Okay, thank you, Mr. Lloyd.' Then, out of the blue, 'Cuckoo's Nest' came to cast. A casting director who sent me up for different things over the years sent me up for that, and it just clicked.
I surround myself with loyalists and people that I would die for. I just would rather die than make bad stuff for people because I'm a terrible dishwasher and a terrible lover and a terrible pet owner.
I had agents in Australia; I just never had any auditions. And if you can't audition, then you can't work. I studied there. I did classes there. I learned how to act. Growing up there, I discovered my love for acting, but I just wasn't getting the opportunities to work professionally.
There's no show business in Canada, so everybody just did stand-up and we all thought, "Oh, we'll just keep doing stand-up." And then I'm like, "There's more work in the States."
[Buckminster Fuller] was quite willing to talk. He'd talk at the drop of a hat.I learned to talk in front of people by listening to the way he did things. Because he would give lessons in how to lecture. He would say, "Never take a note, just stand up and start babbling. And then eventually you're going to be able to make some coherent statements, and so it's like you're vamping. And then people will gradually start to listen to you when this spot of logic shows up in this torrent of verbiage.
I just tried not to just quit. Because sometimes I did have a tendency to think that I would never be back I would never be wearing an NBA logo.
I had given up on acting because I would go for auditions every day, but nothing would happen.
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