A Quote by Jenny Eclair

I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress, so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up. — © Jenny Eclair
I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress, so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up.
I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that's when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.
I don't feel comfortable doing movies. It's not what I trained to do. I trained to be a theater actress. You put me on a stage in front of 2,000 people, I know what to do.
I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
I fell in love with a civilian. Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesn't double - it grows exponentially. Because then suddenly everybody wants to be in your bedroom. But I don't really give them anything.
It's bad enough that I'm an actress that wants to be recognized as an actress. Instead, I am known for doing game shows.
I started doing '30 Rock' and started writing 'Mystery Team' at the beginning of that. While I was doing 'Mystery Team,' I started practicing stand-up. While I was doing stand up, I got 'Community.' It's like I planted trees six years ago, and now they have fruit.
I started doing stand-up when I was 15 and doing Letterman when I was 20. So I've been doing stand-up comedy and clubs for over 30 years. That's a long time.
Of course when I started, it's not because I was such a brilliant actress. I didn't know I was good. I thought I was really bad. I was very shy. I was 18 and dreaming of becoming an actress.
When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry.
I'm just as intrigued by acting as ever. It's an ongoing process. There's no arrival. There's no point at which you say "Oh, OK, done it, got it." It just doesn't happen. And that's true of any creative endeavor. For me, it's just a lifelong interest. I'm very much interested in the craft. I started by doing plays and it took me a long time to feel comfortable doing movies, working with cameras. I felt like I was a theater actress pretending that I was a movie actress for quite a while. Now, I just love the process of working with cameras and being on a set and trying to put a film together.
My mother always wanted to be an actress. She was an extra in movies and stuff. I have a feeling this is the classic story: The mother wants to be an actress, and the child ends up doing it. But it was never a jealousy thing between us. It was like - well, I was making my mom happy.
When I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.
Once I started doing stand-up, everything fell into place. That was when I started acting more; I felt like I'd found my place in the business.
I was so frustrated with my whole life that I walked up this hilltop and screamed at the heavens. It was very dramatic - but then again, I am an actress - and I said, "Fine! I'll be a character actress! Just tell me what you want me to do!" I was so angry at the universe.
A very dear friend of mine great actress named Wendy Rich Stetson was very active in the theater department at Amherst and I went to all the plays she was in, and it became very clear to me that what she was doing was something I wanted to be doing.
Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry.
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