A biography for Joel Greyhasn’t been written yet.
“It can take me forever to choose the right coffee cup in the morning. And it does make a difference!”
“I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.”
“I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.”
“I was small growing up, and to make matters worse, I wore glasses, and my mother dressed me in attention-getting outfits. I was a target of bullies.”
“There's a lot going on in the world that's very disturbing: rewriting the Holocaust; pseudo-historians rewriting history itself. And we're dealing with a terrorist mentality that involves whole nations.”
“The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.”
“Often, entertainment goes deeper, in terms of ideas, than the newspapers.”
“I fell so hard for the theater. I knew it was a place where you can sort out your life.”
“I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' and jokes such as describing current events as 'ancient history.' Boy, did the audience roar at that one.”
“Acting always affects every part of your life because it's such a solitary, lonely, and thrilling circumstance that you're taking on someone else's character and that responsibility. It's exhausting.”
“I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.”
“You can be taking two steps forward as an actor, but if a movie doesn't make money, you might as well be taking two steps backwards. It's all about economics.”
“'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.”
“I'm very slow. I'm a slow learner.”
“I don't want to do material that I don't like. I've always stuck to that policy. If that means being out of work for awhile, that's fine with me.”
“I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.”
“Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.”
“I don't look like Brad Pitt.”
“My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.”
“My daughter, Jennifer Grey, was in 'Dirty Dancing,' which was shot in the Catskill Mountains, where the great old Jewish entertainers used to appear. It was the first time she'd been to the Borscht Belt, and I don't think she's been back since.”