Joel Grey

“I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.”

“I'm enormously sympathetic to talented people who have few roles to choose from.”

“I've always wanted to do, oddly enough, a live variety show, but only with a live audience.”

“I'd like to direct something at the Public.”

“Satisfying as that 'Cabaret' role was, it is not the only thing I do. But Hollywood is somewhat limited in its perspective about what it is you do or don't do.”

“I'm essentially an actor. And the fact that I got away with singing and dancing for a long time is still a miracle to me.”

“I love 'Cabaret' and 'George M!' They're both incredible as far as I'm concerned.”

“I never think about my age very much. I've always lived my life the same way, full of excitement and anticipation of wonderful things and the knowledge that some not-so-wonderful things come with it.”

“Whenever I get to work with great actors, I'm happy.”

“My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'”

“I really do enjoy everything I do. I just do so much.”

“If you don't tell the whole truth about yourself, life is a ridiculous exercise.”

“Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.”

“I think there is a lot of loss in being a professional child actor. All of a sudden, you start to want to be an adult at the age of 8 or 9. I never did kid stuff, so to speak, so I was in many ways ostracized by the other kids. But I did get this other life, so it was a trade-off.”

“Theater is the most important thing in life for me.”

“That's what people forget about, is that when things are very, very powerful in a sad way, they have that possibility of also being over-the-top, hysterically funny.”

“For me to take a role, I read a script, and I think, 'Wow, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I want to try.'”

“A lot of people have problems thinking of you doing more than one thing. If you do one thing, then you couldn't possibly do another thing well. Of course, we know that's not so.”

“When I met Jo Wilder, I fell crazy in love and never thought about homosexuality. And I thought, 'Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is life.'”

“I always wanted children, to be a dad. That was as important to me as being an actor.”