Annaleigh Ashford

“I come from a family of educators.”

“I love to share in a scene - I'd rather share than be alone.”

“I'll be, like, grocery shopping or doing something totally mundane, and once a day, you'll hear a Cyndi Lauper song on the radio. It is astounding what an icon she is, not just in popular music but in popular culture.”

“I love finding ways to make familiar characters into someone unique.”

“I don't know how to explain it, but ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to perform.”

“I grew up listening to cabaret. At 7 and 8 years old, I was already singing like a club performer.”

“I, for one, have a great momma.”

“We had a cabin in the mountains - and I remember, one year around this time, a moose came down the river, and one night he came to our cabin and hung out on the back porch for hours. They're really, really, really big animals. And dangerous, especially if they're a momma.”

“Even though technically the fundamentals of acting are always the same in every medium, what's different is the size.”

“Theater was just what I was supposed to do.”

“I feel like any actor that has started out in the theater, the theater will always be their home.”

“I'm a modern girl with old-fashioned sensibilities.”

“I actually have some family that's from Missouri, and my husband is an outrageous St. Louis Cardinals fan, so we go to St. Louis every once in a while to go see baseball games.”

“Animals are completely grounded in their root chakra.”

“In 'Kinky Boots,' I looked for moments to be bold, showing Lauren's gutsiness and smarts. She's a little bit kooky now, too, and I love me some kooky.”

“I think no matter what you are going to pursue, if you pursue it like it's the most important thing, then everything else will be lost. And at the end of the day, when it's time to evaluate the path that you chose for your life, there has to be something more.”

“I kind of had a quarter-life crisis before I did 'Rent.' I had done Glinda in 'Wicked' for a while. I had worked for Cirque Du Soleil, and then I did 'Hair.' Then I had a real quiet time, not having work, and it was a time of not only self-discovery of me as a person, but also what I wanted as an artist and actor.”

“My very first scene on camera for anything was with Sarah Jessica Parker in the 'Sex and the City' movie, and she couldn't have been more lovely and beautiful and kind, and on top of that, she's just a killer actress.”