A Quote by Wendy Liebman
I took an acting class. After the first day, the teacher quit, so they said take another. When I saw 'How to be a Stand-up Comedian,' it resonated. I realized I'd rather make 200 people laugh than make one person cry.
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I wasn't very good in my serious acting class. Sometimes people took our class so seriously, so I used to, sort of, make fun of people after class. And so a friend of mine said, 'Why don't you do the comedy thing.' That's how it all worked out.
I'm an entertainer first. But I do as a stand up comedian, the way for me to evolve is to make a difference, to make people laugh and learn and do something different. Because there's too many comedians out there just making people laugh. And anybody can do that.
Acting is about giving yourself away, like the U2 song 'With or Without You.' You just don't stay behind a character and make people laugh or cry. At some point you have to take off that mask, and when you do, you're a human being, not just an actor. After all, I'm Catherine the person first. You share that.
That's how to make a stand-up comedian: You take a person who is uncomfortable and try to squirrel their way out of it through humor.
Before I even knew what stand up was, I tried to make people laugh at school because that was how I made friends, so I think that's how I got drawn into comedy and obviously I was just some kid at school being silly, so the first time I saw a professional comedian and how smooth and funny the person was I totally got into standup and I would say obviously Richard Pryor was the guy. He's the greatest of all time and then George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Bill Cosby. It's so weird to bring up his name now but leaving out his off-stage antics... you could learn a lot from him.
comedy ... is much harder to do than drama. It's not true that laugh and the world laughs with you. It's very hard to make a group of people laugh at the same thing; much easier to make them cry at the same thing. ... That's why great comic acting is probably the greatest acting there is.
One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I'm a comedian, which I'm not. A comedian is someone who can stand up in front of an audience and make you laugh. I've never done stand-up and I never will. I'm a comic actor. My comedy comes through my characters.
I took my first acting class at age 6 because I found out that's what Carol Burnett was doing - acting. Also she had an imaginary friend as a kid and went to UCLA, two things we have in common. I will always admire her and hope one day, I can make someone laugh a fraction as hard as she's made me bellyache.
Because you make me laugh don't make you a comic. A comedian is a person who, that's how they make their living.
I'd rather do comedy. I'd rather make people laugh than cry.
I'd like to think I'm a little more memorable or specific now. People laugh at me in a way they wouldn't laugh at another comedian, rather than being like, "Okay, who's the next joke-slinger? Give me some jokes so I may laugh and go about my day!"
I find it easier to cry than I do to laugh convincingly. It's incredibly hard to pull off a laugh that feels natural take after take after take, that feels real. You can tell a fake laugh the minute you hear it, and that's something I really struggle with more than producing tears.
I only took a high school acting class because there was no other class I wanted to take. I loved it, but I was always against acting as a profession. I didn't like the monetary fluctuations I saw.
Love one another, Jesus said. Sometimes it took a lifetime to learn how. Sometimes it took someone to hit rock bottom to make someone reach up and grasp hold and be lifted from the mire to stand on a firm foundation.
I felt so much when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I felt everything. I didn't understand [myself], I was so happy yet so angry and sad. That was the point when I realized that I needed to tell stories and make characters come alive and I needed to make people cry, and make people angry, and make people happy, and make them laugh.
I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.
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