Kelli O'Hara Quotes

I've always wanted my characters to have more dimension and realistic cores than the ingenue material often provides. It's been a challenge.

I loved to sing and I loved to act, and I didn't want to continue opera because I wanted to act.

I was able to do concerts all the way up until two weeks before I had the baby; I thought I was stopping a month ahead, but he was three weeks early.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to be jaded or sarcastic or bitter in life, but I hang on to the reasons why life is beautiful.

If you have kids, in my opinion, your priorities better shift to them.

American theatre, to me, represents zeroing down on what the need is to get inside the personal hearts of people. I think it's really beautiful if we can keep doing that instead of just fluffing everything up and hiding again.

I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.

There is such a cliche to certain roles that all I can do is to try to make them realistic and work for the times, and so the audience actually won't see me as a caricature of something, but rather as an actual person.

Everyone has these ideas, especially about the middle of the country, about people being backwards and three-toothed.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

I'm an actress. I'm not putting my life on the line for any great cause. I don't step out too boldly about anything except my children and family.

I try to do different roles and try to immerse myself deeply and see what they need to be that's different than the last one.

I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom.

Every part has its relief when I'm done with it.

In this particular business [cinema], you don't choose your own experiences. They start to happen and then they start to peel off and make other ones happen, and then you can start choosing. But it happens to you.

I feel so rich in my emotions and in my life and so grateful when I'm home and so grateful when I'm at work.

When I'm given an opportunity with music and goodness, then I want to do that [play that role]. I want to go all the way to the edge of that and make it as big as I can.

I think it can be a good idea to know what you do well and use that to open the door for yourself. Once you open the door, close it behind you, and start to make changes.

In my special place, room service could only consist of my husband making me a breakfast of eggs, avocados, and hummus. And coffee with milk.

It's really important that I have a personal life.

If you act brave, you can seem brave, and if you do it enough, you can talk yourself into believing you're brave.

Sometimes I'm considered, I guess, a subtle actor. Maybe I'm less of a showman and more just trying to tell the story. I don't know what the perception is. I just want to tell the story so the story as a whole works as opposed to just making sure that I work.

My degree was in opera.

With a revival, you're compared to somebody else.

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be.

My mom's side of the family is from Arkansas!

The hardest role that I've ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in 'Light in the Piazza' at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I've ever had, but the most beautiful experience I've ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed.

Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.

We can make choices, but we can be vulnerable; we can do the wrong thing, but the wrong thing for all the right reasons. I think it [life] is basically about forgiveness, and not about someone else forgiving you, but you forgiving yourself. I think we all want a lot of that.

You breathe fast when you're scared.

I think in this business [acting] there's the option to do a lot of things and say, "I don't care. I'm just going to do what I want," but what I do affects a lot of people.

I don't read reviews, because if you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad.

I love to play things that are out-of-the-box. It's just that I don't always get the chance to do it!

I'm trying to think of myself at a quiet time. I need to do better with a quiet mind because I'm constantly going and I think that's what feeds me. I've been that way my whole life. But I don't think I picture things so much as I talk them through. Words, words, words. Words and melody.

Our natural thing to do when we break away from our parents and our family is to decide in how many ways they were wrong and bad, and the older you get you start to realize, "By 'bad' I mean 'different'" and then you get a little bit older and you think, "And by 'different' I mean 'pretty awesome but just not like me.'"

When I was a kid, I would sing in people's living rooms and for different little family things.

I never really try to watch the movie of the things I've been in.

I do always try to find the goodness in somebody. I can't possibly believe in somebody if they don't have a core.

My great-grandfather, Peter O'Hara, was born in Ireland, I believe, in County Clare. His father, my great-great-grandfather, had actually come to America a generation before when times were very bad in Ireland. He worked in the Pennsylvania area and did well with horses and farming.

If a man thinks you're beautiful or thinks you're strong or thinks you're smart, take the power and use it, but don't need it.

Some songs depend heavily on the character, but, for the most part, a great song begs for reinterpretation every time it is sung, even when in character.

I think a lot of the way I live my life is not just for me, which has sometimes been a burden. A lot of the choices I make are in order to make them [my parents] proud.

I don't have that many family and friends.

One thing I really, truly believe in is having something greater than myself to be grateful to.

I'm proud to be Irish.

I don't want to be famous for being famous.

I'm a mother, and when you have children, there's a protection. You'll do a lot to protect them, to do what's best for them.

Corned beef and cabbage - that's our favorite holiday meal when all the O' Haras gather around the table.

The 'Carousel' overture has always been one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.

I'm grateful that I feel the way that I do - to make choices based on a lot of people's feelings - even though it has been hard at times, especially when I was younger, but I feel like it has led me down the right road for me. I'm very happy with what has come of that.

When you step out and do a song in a musical, the easier thing to do is make it funny. But when those transitions become necessary, when they aren't camp, that, to me, is magic. I've done musical comedies and enjoyed them, but subject matter that's deeper and more realistic is always what's appealed to me most.

You can only ask to be respected if you respect yourself.

I've always wanted to do a Shakespeare play.