Laura Benanti Quotes

There's an infantilization that happens to actresses in general - musical theatre, straight theatre, television, film - we're spoken to like children. Actors are spoken to like children a lot of the time.

I think it's a deeper issue on the lack of communication in our culture in general. It's not abnormal to see a family out to dinner and every person is on their phone instead of communicating with each other and that's pretty sad.

My parents were in 'Brigadoon' on Broadway when I was a couple of years old.

Miscarrying is a horrible painful event. That just felt like something that needed to be addressed. I am by no means prescribing how people grieve. I am just saying it's painful, it's not your fault and it's so common. Well if it's so common - let's talk about it and open a dialogue where people know what to say to you.

Some people have jobs where other people don't clap for them. I don't understand that.

I didn't love stickers and unicorns and stuff, but just if I were to ride on the back of a beast to work, I want it to be a frickin' unicorn.

In LA you can't tell the teenagers and the moms apart, which is so strange to me. And then it's like, "Who is leading who?" Are the moms emulating the daughters? In which case we're going backwards - that's not how it goes - the mothers teach the daughters how to be. It's a very strange thing to me.

There's a lot of pressure on Broadway. There's this feeling that the show has to be a commercial success and the producers have to make their money back and Tonys and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

What's the worst, is when people clearly haven't researched you. One time an interviewer asked me if I do a lot of plays. I'm like, yeah. Have you Googled me? There's this thing called Google, and you can ask Google that question. Then you could come to me with informed questions that didn't make me feel like I am brand new to the world.

My mother was an actress and my voice teacher, an incredible voice teacher. My biological father is an actor, and my stepfather, who raised me along with my mother, is a psychotherapist. I was always supported in creative ventures.

People want to go to a musical to be razzled and dazzled, so to have an opportunity to do a musical that feels serious and moving is exciting to me. Especially since people think of me as a silly, funny person, so I like to be able to show that other side of me.

I think we've become a TV culture where we forget the live performer in front of us can see us. I think there is a self-centeredness that happens. There's nothing more important than what you are doing in that moment. So, unless it's an emergency, put your phone away.

We learn by watching. That's what concerns me a little about the society we're in now because so much of what we're watching is entitled, self-centered, brats with no talent becoming very, very famous for literally no reason.

I feel like people used to leave their homes and go to their local theatre, and they used to watch ballet dancers and musical theatre performers and tap dancers and orchestras and dog acts. You had to leave your home, be in the presence of other people, know how to behave, and enjoy the human being whose beating heart was in front of you.

I have to create opportunities for myself. But the thing I really have learned is that you gain nothing from sitting around waiting for the phone to ring - you have to do it for yourself.

I always love to see singing on television; any form of a musical is exciting to me.

I was always a little adult. Even as a little kid, I just couldn't understand why I was surrounded by all these kids. I took things very seriously.

Do I want to write a musical? No. I like to do musicals.

Think of life and the world as a wall and that we're all climbing up the wall. So just put one hand in front of the other, keep your eye on the prize, and then get there. And then turn around and help the other people - because you're already there, so start helping.

Everything has become so pop-rock oriented that finding a role for a soprano, and finding an audience for a soprano, is tricky. Unless you're dealing with a revival, which is why I do so many revivals - because my specific tone and vocal quality lends itself to that type of writing.

I haven't been trying to be anything other than myself.

I'm such a goody two-shoes, I've never stolen a single thing. I would not be able to handle it. I would not be able to live with the guilt of having stolen something.

Being in front of a live audience again. I get that in my concerts but there's nothing like being on Broadway.

I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

I finally stopped complaining about 'Why isn't everybody else making me what I want to be?' You can't rely solely on your agent or your managers to educate people as to who you are.

I am a feminist with a capital 'F' .

How did we go - in a relatively short amount of time - from Audrey Hepburn to Kim Kardashian? I don't know how that happened. Like did we all collectively slip and hit our heads as a society? Why are we accepting garbage as nourishment? I don't know what's going on.

For me, Twitter has given me a direct line to the world - it gave me an opportunity to be like, This is my voice.

I am not so secretly a comedian. I write a lot of my own material if you've seen videos I've done. I write jokes.

That was my intention, was to have it be from the perspective of my high-school-aged self, and to try and emulate the music that I listened to at that time. So to write essentially like a pop-punk song about musicals. I wanted the dichotomy of the tone of the music with the lyrics and my singing voice.

I think it's good to have an old fashioned musical as well as new musicals. There's a lot of room for different shows.

The first song I ever learned to sing and play on the piano was 'I Remember Sky' when I was 10 years old. I remember thinking, This is the most beautiful song I will ever hear. And that remains true for me to this day. His music is the sole reason I wanted to be on Broadway. I wanted to sing music that transports us to the most important place one can travel, our hearts.

My parents took me to see Stevie Wonder when I was about 3, but my mom made us leave because everybody around us was smoking pot.

I wanted other women to know there's no shame in talking about it. People don't say they're pregnant until the second trimester. I intellectually understand that you don't want the whole world to know your business, but at the same time what does that mean? You don't tell your employers you're pregnant, but then when you miscarry no one knows you miscarried. Miscarrying is a horrible painful event.

I sing songs from the theater and pop songs. When I say 'pop songs,' I mean from the 90's. And I tell jokes. So it's sort of a stand up show meets a concert - not your traditional lounging across a piano cabaret show. It's much looser.

I try to give the appearance that I have it all together and that I know what I'm talking about, but at the end of the day, I think I might be full of crap.

I think there's that weird bastardization where musical theatre actors are treated as almost like vaudevillians or circus performers - that we're somehow not good actors because we sing and dance.

My biggest influence is someone I really don't know at all: Tina Fey. Smart, funny, beautiful, self-deprecating, also a mom and a wife.

I'm not a big weird eater-of-things. I mean honestly I would say like for me, like escargot or sweetbreads is the weirdest thing I've eaten. But I haven't eaten like bugs or ... not that I know of.

I'm 35 but because I've been acting professionally playing women since I was eighteen years old - I never played a teenager - people constantly think I'm like ten years older than I am, which is a little hard on my ego.

I think being young in a grownup world, I think it stunted me a little bit. I had to grow up too fast on the outside, but I didn't get to grow up on the inside in the way that you might if you're allowed to fail more.

My favorite show tune has got to be Stephen Sondheim's "I Remember Sky." It's probably the saddest song of all time I sing it to myself in the mirror. No, I am kidding. That's the joke.

The average age of a model is fifteen years old. It's so crazy to me. And how confusing for men; they're like, "Well, I'm supposed to be attracted to that image" - like that's what it's designed for - "but it's a fifteen year old girl." I think it's a very confusing thing for every single person involved.