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All Quotes by author - Jessie Mueller
" As an actor, you always use the tools of who you are and your experience of what you have to offer. "
Tools
You
Actor
" Directors didn't know what to do with me in college. I didn't really sound like a belter. I didn't look like a soprano. But in New York, I was in the right place at the right time, where my unusualness fit the bill. "
New York
Place
Time
" Growing up, I never felt like the pretty girl. "
Girl
Growing Up
Growing
" I always loved playing the sidekick, and that's what I expected - I didn't think I was pretty enough or diva enough to play the lead. "
Always
Enough
Think
" I always thought moving to New York would mean starting over in theater, because I had great work in Chicago and didn't want to become a waitress here. "
Thought
New York
Great
" I'd been acting in Chicago since I came back after University, and I got a call from my agent saying, 'They're doing this revival of 'On a Clear Day,' and I actually auditioned when the team came through Chicago for the 'American Idiot' tour. "
Team
Doing
Day
" I didn't really start performing until high school. My whole family is actually in the business, and started in the business in Chicago, so I was going to shows when I was a teeny-tiny kid, but I didn't really start performing until high school. "
High School
Business
Family
" 'If I Loved You.' All the way. Totally intimidated by it. From the outside, it has this aura of being one of the greatest musical theater scenes ever written. "
You
Way
Outside
" If I've gotten to a point where people want to see something because I'm in it, I'm grateful and humbled. But having an awareness of that doesn't help me do what I need to do, I think. "
Help
Grateful
Think
" I grew up watching the films of 'Carousel' and 'Oklahoma' and 'The Music Man' and 'My Fair Lady' - all the classic musicals of that golden era, The sort of more modern musical theater, or what was modern when I was at a ripe teenage age, I wasn't really listening to that stuff. I was really more raised on the classics. "
Listening
Music
Man
" I loved being in Cambridge. I think about it often. It was this great little capsule of time to me. "
Great
Loved
Me
" I'm glad to say I'm experiencing more of a conversation in my artistic workforce world than I ever have before. But it's a job, as an artist, to reflect the world we live in; that's our job. "
Conversation
World
Live
" In school, I really felt like I didn't fit a type. I think everybody had a hard time putting me in a category. They all sort of realized, 'Hmm, you don't really look like a soprano. You're not really a character belter.' "
Time
Character
Look
" I think it's the hardest thing to remind yourself you have to do it the way you would do it. Because no one else is going to do it that way. If you don't do it, then no one else will - and the world won't see it. "
Think
See
Yourself
" I think the job of art and drama is to hold a mirror up to those things and say, 'What do you think about it?' "
Mirror
You
Art
" I've always loved the song 'It Might as Well Be Spring'. "
Well
Song
Might
" I went to Syracuse University. "
University
Syracuse
" My dad listened to a lot of James Taylor when I was growing up. We had a couple of his cassettes in the car, and we'd go on a lot of long family car trips. It was either strange musicals or James Taylor - or Whitney Houston. It was quite the combination there. "
Family
Car
Growing
" My first professional gig was 'Once Upon a Mattress' at the Drury Lane Oakbrook... I was in the ensemble. I was one of the ladies in waiting, and I covered Winnifred. "
Professional
Waiting
Once
" My reason for leaving 'Beautiful', because I had such an amazing time on that show, was by the time I left, I had been doing the show for almost two years. I was a little burnt out. "
Leaving
Time
Amazing
" Some of the best actors think they're terrible; that's what keeps you connected to a vulnerability that makes it possible for people to empathize with you. "
People
You
Think
" The important thing is the storytelling and having a script that makes you feel you're living and breathing through the characters. "
Breathing
Feel
Important
" There's not millions of dollars riding behind something - so I think a lot of people took chances on me and cast me in roles in Chicago that I never would have gotten cast in possibly if I had come to New York right away. I got to be the not-your-typical-choice for a role. "
People
Chicago
Me
" The thing I try to tell people who are just starting in the business is to listen to yourself, trust yourself, and be kind to yourself. And do the work to cultivate who you are and what your point of view is. Don't try to be like anybody else. That's what will make you an interesting artist. "
Work
Yourself
Business
" This business is crazy-pants. We flit in and out of these fantasy worlds and these intense periods of work and camaraderie, and then it goes away, and you do it all over again. "
Business
Over
Fantasy
" 'White Christmas' is one of my favorite movies, so I've always just had a love for that kind of golden era musical. "
Love
Kind
Christmas
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