We talk to a lot of people here at Broadway.com—a lot of talented, exceptional theater people—who share their thoughts, dreams and jokes with us. Here's a look back at what some of these folks said to us in 2005!
January
"In the beginning, I would look in the mirror and think, 'What have I gotten myself into?' But now, I seriously dont' feel pretty unless I'm green." —Shoshana Bean, on playing Elphaba in Wicked
"I have to make faces—not only with my face but with my body and with my hands. It's not just overacting—it's overbeing." —Richard Kind on performing in The Producers
"I once heard that some fans were calling themselves Q-Tips, which is nice, because... I mean, I like Q-Tips." —Avenue Q's Ann Sanders on nicknaming the show's fans
"To put the splendidly poetic and profound words of August Wilson in your mouth and wrap your heart around the arias that he writes for his characters is simply bliss!" —Ruben Santiago-Hudson left on taking on the playwright's Gem of the Ocean
"Finally, it became a play; not a play with a frozen text but a breathing, ever-changing piece. It was like directing mercury." —Director Des McAnuff on directing Billy Crystal in 700 Sundays
"I never took LSD, but if I had, it would have been like tonight. It's strange to see you rmusic put together in such a fashion." —Mike Love, original member of the Beach Boys, on seeing Good Vibrations' opening night performace
"My dad came to the show and cried, and he's an attorney from Boston." —Little Women's Jenny Powers on the emotional weight of the show
"My theory has always been that love and commitment and family and caring are not heterosexual words. They're human words." —Harvey Fierstein on playing patriarch Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
"To me, there's SAG, Equity, AFTRA and Law & Order." —Julie Halston right on the must-haves of an actor's bio
"Sisterhood! It's all powerful." —Christine Ebersole on the all-female cast of Steel Magnolias
"I think that the women are going to be a little trickier actually, because at least the puppets I can put in a cabinet at the end. If I did that to one of these women, I would never hear the end of it." —Director Jason Moore comparing two of his projects: Avenue Q to Steel Magnolias
"'Mamet won't be there tomorrow.' I get this message from Matt, our stage manager, the day before our first rehearsal. I think, 'What does it mean if Mamet's not there?' Then I think, 'What does it mean if Mamet is there?' Then I think, 'Why does everyone call this man by his last name?'" —Keith Nobbs on appearing in David Mamet's Romance off-Broadway
"The only thing I do naturally is eat... Everything else I have to work at." —Andrea Martin, who played Golde in Fiddler on the Roof
"Mainly I'm a con artist in that I'm an actor. What I do is make people believe that something is real when they know perfectly well it isn't." —Dirty Rotten Scoundrels star John Lithgow on his craft
March
"I think these characters—they're completely nonsexual—but it's very much an affair that they're having. I love that about their relationship." —Norbert Leo Butz on the characters he and John Lithgow play in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
"It's smart. It's funny. It's naughty. It's heaven." —Joanna Gleason right on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
"It is a testosterone fest. But that's part of what this world that [Mamet] is painting is all about. It's men. Vicious men. Funny vicious men, by the way." —Jeffrey Tambor on Glengarry Glen Ross
"This is it. This is the contemporary Hamlet as [playwright] Edward [Albee] says." —Bill Irwin on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
"He knows every word in this play. He's had it for 40 years and he'll say, 'That was great, but you left out a 'Ha!' and you'll say, 'Thank you, Edward'" —Kathleen Turner on playwright Edward Albee's participation in the rehearsal process for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
"Sometimes I look around, and I can't believe it. This is what I do! It's very exciting, especially to be originating a role like this." —All Shook Up star Jenn Gambatese
"I feel alive about it. I look forward to being there, to doing something there. But that's about as far as it goes. I can't say I'm thrilled about it, or I'm scared about it." —On Golden Pond star James Earl Jones left on bringing the play to Broadway
"It's like a rock concert. The Python Heads. It's like David [Hyde Pierce] once said, 'It's like an Elton John concert, and we're all Elton John, collectively.' They embrace you in this big hug of applause and cheers and laughter. And to get to make a large group of people laugh on a daily basis is a blessing." —Steve Rosen on the audience reaction to Spamalot
"It's almost disgusting. We all love each other and the material so much. I can't believe we actually get paid, but they do pay us, which is nice." —Hank Azaria on the lovefest at Spamalot
"She said Elvis would be proud. And I said, 'OK, that's all I needed to hear.' Reviews, shmeviews." —All Shook Up star Cheyenne Jackson on backstage visitor Priscilla Presley
"[Director] Doug Hughes kept making me make her more and more appalling. I live for the day where he says, 'You know you can soften her a little bit in this place' But I don't think it's going to happen." —Doubt star Cherry Jones on the director's take on her character
"What research? I am a villain. We all are. A villain never thinks himself a villain. He is as human as anyone. Find the humanity, the rest falls in place." —Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's Marc Kudisch on researching his role as the evil Baron Bomburst in the show
"Crazy as cat shit. But a genius!" —Chicago's Brenda Braxton left on prolific director George C. Wolfe
"I think that's what [playwright] John [Patrick Shanley] is trying to show us: That we've gotten so comfortable with our need to have absolute certainty about things. And it shows great maturity, and a higher sense of morality, when you don't have all the facts—to say, 'Wait a minute. We have to slow down. We have to discuss this.'" —Doubt star Cherry Jones on the questions the play raises
"The first time I saw De Kooning at the Museum of Modern Art, shortly after graduating from college, I think I had my first big revelation about expressionism. I went, 'Shazaam! I get it. I get what matrix this all sprung from.'" —Mercedes Ruehl, star of the solo show Woman Before a Glass about art collector Peggy Guggenheim
It's a crack group. I kind of felt within the first 40 seconds of the read-through that something exciting is happening." —Glengarry Glen Ross' Liev Schreiber on the cast
April
"He's this rapper, he's streetwise but he's from the suburbs, you know? [Luke] totally mirrors my life. He's just trying to be as cool as possible. Basically, Luke is the Donnie Wahlberg of the Altar Boyz." —Altar Boyz star Andy Karl left on identifying with his character
"Well, this is it. It's got just about everything a family would want to see in a theater. It's so bloody colorful." —Philip Bosco on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
"Audiences should come to Broadway and leave saying, 'I have never seen anything like that or anything as good or any actor as good.' —Chitty Chitty Bang Bang star Raul Esparza on Broadway's commitment to excellence
"Even when I did Full House, my stand-up was always PG-19. I guess it's R-rated now—in a good way. I'm not purposely dirty; I just do what I find funny." —Comedian Bob Saget, star of off-Broadway's Privilege
"The music in Light in the Piazza is something that we've been missing for a really long time on Broadway. It's deep and it is emotional and it's melodic and it's lush. And it takes you someplace. Just the music itself." —The Light in the Piazza's Sarah Uriarte Berry
"I was good at everything in school. Except gym." —The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee composer/lyricist William Finn
"I did want to get on the stage and do live theater, so when they approached me with this project, I jumped on it." —Julius Caesar star Denzel Washington right
"It's a great story. You don't know what's going to happen and it's always interesting and smart and unexpected and surprising. And then, shocking, brutal, terrifying, kind of touching and hilarious and outrageous, so that's pretty good. I loved it right away." —The Pillowman's Jeff Goldblum on his initial reaction to the play
"I love that she's present, that she's hopeful, that everything is a joy, that everything is magical. Even the pain is magical. Such a beautiful lesson to learn." —Sweet Charity star Christina Applegate on her character Charity Hope Valentine
"Most people call me incredibly freaky. I gotta say that I fucked up more in Wicked on that rope than I like to remember. I split my pants from ass to knee one night and had to do a very serious scene with my dance belt exposed to the mostly underage audience at the Gershwin Theatre." —Dirty Rotten Scoundrels star Norbert Leo Butz recalls onstage bloopers
"He's really clumsy. One of the joys in life is to watch a great big huge man totally wipe out backstage. It takes John about three minutes to hit the floor. It's like watching a Great Sequoia falling gracelessly." —Norbert Leo Butz on the foibles of his Dirty Rotten Scoundrels co-star John Lithgow
"I told the creators if they wanted to do this show in a mall in Oklahoma, I would go. As long as they keep asking me to do it, I will... Everybody is saying, 'Oh, it's so daring.' You know what? It's not that daring. It's good theater." —The Light in the Piazza star Victoria Clark
"I try to set a tone of love and appreciation and gratitude as much as I possibly can, and luckily for me, it hasn't been that hard of a job because the people that I work with are unbelievable. I think the stars were aligned and we were all put together and I am just blessed." —Sweet Charity star Christina Applegate
"I mean, when people laugh really hard like they do at the show, it's like riding waves at a rock concert. Like stage diving without the drugs." —Dirty Rotten Scoundrels star Sherie Rene Scott
"At the opening night party, they had clowns on stilts, jugglers, a chocolate fountain, popcorn, hot dogs. [My son] looked at me like I had been holding back. Like, 'This is what you do?' I had to tell him, 'No, no, darling. Opening nights don't usually look like this.' It's usually a dark bar with a bottle of vodka." —Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's Jan Maxwell right on the overwhelming perks of performing family-friendly fare
June
"I think it's just funny that after that many years and that many plays suddenly there's a shit storm over one play. I mean, it's great! But still surprising.... Just out of the blue, apropos of nothing—I said, 'Think I'm gonna write a play called Doubt.' And someone said, 'Well, what's it about?' I said, 'I have no idea.'" —Longtime scribe John Patrick Shanley on Doubt, his first Broadway play
"I was sleeping and my girlfriend ran in and started smacking me on my tushy and screaming that I got nominated…. Never before—not even on my birthday—have this many people called me." —Spelling Bee star and Best Featured Actor in a Musical winner Dan Fogler on receiving the news of his nomination
"I'm just so glad to be back in New York. Honestly. Walking down a red carpet anywhere is kind of weird, but it's really different here than it is anywhere else." —Tony nominee for Best Actress in a Play Mary-Louise Parker of Reckless at the awards ceremony
"It's sort of like being in the Kentucky Derby for the arts, which of course is a complete oxymoron; you don't do horse races with the arts." —Doubt star and Best Actress in a Play winner Cherry Jones on the Tony Awards
"I took a lot of Claritin." —Best Featured Actress in a Musical winner Sara Ramirez of Spamalot on what she did to get ready for the big night
"I woke up, had some fruit, did a matinee, got into the tux, you know, normal routine basically." —Best Featured Actor in a Play nominee David Harbour left of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on his pre-Tony ceremony preparation
"I have to have an emergency phone number in case anything happens " —Best Actress in a Musical nominee Sutton Foster of Little Womenon the Harry Winston jewelry she borrowed for the Tony ceremony
"We got offstage. I jumped into the shower and then just put on the boy clothes. I bathed. In Anatevka we don't all bathe, but on the weekend I bathe. On the day off." —Presenter Harvey Fierstein on getting ready for the Tonys after performing in Fiddler on the Roof
"I'm not just another sweaty face." —Dirty Rotten Scoundrels star and Best Actress in a Musical nominee Sherie Rene Scott on the humid Tony night weather
"[My agent] said, 'Christopher Sieber, you just got nominated for a Tony. What are you gonna do now?' And I said, 'Go to Home Depot?'" —Best Featured Actor in a Musical Nominee Christopher Sieber of Spamalot on receiving the news of his nomination
July
"I'm going out and thinking and listening, particularly to silences. The silence is a thing you hear as an actor. You listen for laughs, but the silence is where the gold is, you know? Unless they're not laughing. Then it's not gold at all!" —Mark Twain Tonight! star Hal Holbrook
"It really is the perfect summer job, you know? I mean, it's probably a pretty damn good job anytime, but there's something about being in a comedy in the summer that makes everybody have such a good time, the players and the watchers." —The Constant Wife's Lynn Redgrave left
"It's words, words, words, words, story, story, story, story—an immensely intricate textual dance. But it's the very visceral and often violent images that are at the core of the play. And for this role, George, he talks on and on, but I think his physical being is an essential part of the role. He is standing there in a way that tells the audience that he is what he is: complicated, beaten, tortured, but also angry, hurt, with some kind of strength, too." —Bill Irwin on his role as George in the revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?
"I've played so many wild and eccentric people that it's nice to play one who was a bit more normal, though he's not exactly normal. And it's sort of unusual for me to be playing a straight person these days." —Manuscript star Jeffrey Carlson
"I also loved playing—get this—a little pink jacket. Her fur-lined hood was her mouth, her eyes were on top of the hood, and her sleeves were her arms. She first appeared on Elmo's World: Jackets, and she was so adorable that the writers wrote a show for her where she appeared as Zoe's jacket come to life. No, we're not on drugs." —Avenue Q's Stephanie D'Abruzzo on one of her more bizarre puppetry gigs
"You never forget that it's summer because it is so hot out here, but if you're going to be hot, you want to be with people you love and doing something that you love. And that is definitely Two Gentlemen of Verona." —Two Gentlemen of Verona star Renee Elise Goldsberry on doing the musical at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park
"The first time I ever saw Shakespeare in the Park was when I was really little, and it was Raul Julia performing. It's just great to come back around playing Julia in a production that he did that he brought here. There are so many different things about it that make me think I belong here and should be trying it. I think it's a really right fit." —Two Gentlemen of Verona star Rosario Dawson
"I wanted to be a singer, an opera singer. Well, actually, first I wanted to be Whitney Houston!" —Wicked star Megan Hilty right on childhood aspirations
"I wish I could claim salsa dancing as a hobby... that would be exotic right? Perhaps I shall take up salsa soon. Or at least eat some." —Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's Erin Dilly on pastimes
"The difference between this and other 'jukebox musicals,' is that he actually wrote a musical about his life without actually writing a musical about his life, which is very exciting." —Lennon's Chad Kimball on the personal nature of the songs of John Lennon
"This is a musical and they have their own way of expressing his songs, and it just shows how his songs are so versatile." —Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, on the musical Lennon
"I was in the bathroom. I forgot to lock the door and who comes walking in but Yoko Ono. I go, 'Oh! I love you!' She was so embarrassed and my bare ass is out, and she's like, 'Yeah…don't worry about it…' I mean talk about breaking the ice with the person you're playing!" —Lennon star Julie Danao-Salkin
September
"That was the original goal, when I was in high school, to be on Broadway. I didn't really know what it was to make a movie, but I had sat in the velvet seat, I held the waxy Playbill, I heard the orchestra tune-up, I knew what streets the theater doors were on, I watched sweaty actors walk outside. And I said to myself, 'That's the place I want to go.'" —Fiddler on the Roof star Rosie O'Donnell right on her early aspiration to be on Broadway
"You know, it sounds like a cliché, but for some reason I like playing characters who are flawed. If there's something I personally disapprove of about my character, I actually like that because I think it's human." —Julia Stiles on approaching her role in Fran's Bed
"It's about life in America. It's about how the Latinos and the Anglos live together." —Latonologues's Eugenio Derbez on the show's premise
"This is a story that shouldn't happen. They shouldn't meet; they shouldn't fall in love, but they really do." —In My Life creator Joe Brooks on the show's storyline
"I've taken those classes in Los Angeles; I have my Crunch cardio-striptease T-shirt. But this is a whole different thing.... It was about learning how not to slam my thigh into the pole. I had these bruises—it looked like I had gotten hit by a car." —Orfeh on preparing for her role as the stripper Pippi in The Great American Trailer Park Musical
"It was basically one of those situations where the name comes up and they go, 'I wonder if he'd do it?' And you know, it was like asking, 'Do you have any desire to jump out of a plane?' And I'm like, 'Yes. Yes, I do.'" —Sweet Charity's Wayne Knight on being called in to perform in a Broadway musical
"She runs through the gamut of emotions. She's able to just turn it on, and that was a huge challenge." —Chicago star Brooke Shields left on playing Roxie Hart
October
"We always joke in the rehearsal room because all of these words come up that we personally would never use. It's like, 'Who's got the dictionary?'" —A Naked Girl on the Appian Way's James Yaegashi on the script's elaborate vocabulary
"We make fun of ourselves, which is great." —In My Life star Christopher J. Hanke
"Whenever I'm in previews, be it Broadway, off-Broadway or anywhere, one thought always gets me through: I previewed Titanic. I can preview anything." —Five Course Love star John Bolton on the preview process
"Winston is equal parts Boy George, Bea Arthur and Daniel Davis…. This whole show for me has been just checking off the list of childhood dreams. I can just kind of move to Connecticut after this." —In My Life's David Turner right on his flamboyant character Winston
"It's a very dark play that you'll laugh all the way through." —Absurd Person Singular's Mireille Enos on the comedy
"It's like Abbott and Costello, except both of 'em are funny. There's just…that wisp of whatever it is, that they call chemistry. When the two of them are together in the room, there's just something. There's genuine love between the two of them, and that translates. Each of them is just so talented on his own, that it's, like, annoying, but together, it becomes exponential." —Rob Bartlett on fellow Odd Couple cast members Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick
"It's the sex. It's that good." —The Odd Couple star Nathan Lane joking about he and Matthew Broderick work so well together
"What I think [John Doyle's] vision does is reinvent a theater lost. It brings it back to actor and audience without the encumbrance of sound, set design, an abundance of stuff that gets in the way of the storytelling. It's a real advert for doing stuff with less money and getting to the bones of it as opposed to embellishing it and losing sight of the piece. I think he serves Steve [Sondheim]'s work incredibly well." —Sweeney Todd star Patti LuPone on the stripped-down production
"It constantly reminds you that at the heart of it, you're just part of a group telling a story, which is all you ever are, really. So sometimes in our show, your responsibility is to move a chair, and sometimes it's to sing a solo, but actually those two things are equally important, and you end up feeling worse if you screw up a chair move, because it's going to affect everybody else in the show! If you screw up your own lyrics, you know, it's your own deal. It keeps your priorities in the right place." —Sweeney Todd star Michael Cerveris left
"It's fun to sing off-key. Singers, actors, dancers, musicians all pretend, from time to time, at a party, maybe after they've had a couple, that they're bad! The interesting trick is doing it eight times a week. That's where the technique comes in." —Souvenir star Judy Kaye
"This has been a dream in the making for a long time, so to actually see it being performed on a Broadway stage is—don't really have any words to tell you what the feeling is like—I'm just over the top. Maybe I'm really dreaming this whole thing." —Pop music icon Frankie Valli on Jersey Boys, the show that tells his story with the Four Seasons
"It is being a rock star. There are moments in the show when you are performing a song for an audience the same way that the character you're playing would have, so the disconnect between actor and character is no longer there." —John Lloyd Young on playing Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys
"We did stipulate that our theater had to at least be facing west. Sort of like, you want your synagogues to be facing east toward Jerusalem; we wanted to be facing west toward Newark." —Jersey Boys co-librettist Rick Elice on paying respect to the Garden State
"I think that Andrew is becoming increasingly courageous… And [he's] moving away from populism and toward musical expression that is increasingly demanding. It's hugely demanding on the orchestra, hugely demanding on the performers. It's not at all the territory of the simple, regular dance routine. It's much, much more the crossover into the operatic territory while remaining completely accessible. I'm full of praise for him moving in that direction. It's the music theater that I believe in." —The Woman in White director Trevor Nunn on composer Andrew Lloyd Webber
"I normally get to be the romantic hero, until a show like this, I get to play the fat, evil bastard who only gets the rat at the end. And it's the best part! I love it!" —The Woman in White's Michael Ball
"It's such a rarity that an original cast is invited back to participate in a film, especially with a piece such as this that moved so many people and kind of changed the way peole look at musical theater. T's still kind of unfathomable to me." —Original Rent star Taye Diggs right on making the movie version of the musical
"I haven't been on stage singing that song since back in the day, so when we shot it, it was like muscle memory. As soon as we were on that stage listening to that music, it brought back everything." —Original Rent star Idina Menzel right on singing "Seasons on Love" in the film version of the musical
"Maybe it's a little more pertinent now since the whole concept of evolution is being questioned by the know—nothing Republican right. Yes, maybe the play's a little more pertinent now." -Seascape playwright Edward Albee on the play's relevance today versus 30 years ago when it was written
"I'm not shocked easily anymore. I've seen a lot of lizards in my day." -Seascape star George Grizzard on an unusual element of the play
December
"It was meant, when I wrote it, to be a gift that could actually strengthen people in their resolve to really transform themselves. So I see the power of that. And I can see that if you present something in a form that is accessible and that is really strong and really well done, that people can use that." —Writer Alice Walker left on her novel The Color Purple and its reincarnation in musical form
"O'Neill was absolutely fearless in his art, and never wrote for approval or whether it would be a hit or not a hit. He wrote because, as he said himself, his most important job as an artist was to tell the truth, and to be fearless about telling the truth. That's what's amazing about him—he does not sugarcoat anything." —A Touch of the Poet leading man Gabriel Byrne on playwright Eugene O'Neill
"We know Long Day's Journey, we know Moon for the Misbegotten, we know The Iceman Cometh…but we don't know A Touch of the Poet, and I found that very, very liberating. That for whatever reason, there isn't the sense of 'this is how it should be done.'" —A Touch of the Poet director Doug Hughes
"It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'You have to learn the lines, check your flies, and not bump into the furniture. And the rest is about… I don't know what. I have no idea. I wish I could give you a really succinct answer that you could say on Broadway.com: 'We have found the answer!'" —Gabriel Byrne on how he approached his layered role in A Touch of the Poet
"I want older people to know that you've got to get up and do something!" —The Dancer's Life star Chita Rivera left, who is an amazing 72, on one of the reasons for creating her autobiographical show
"Now that's the way it should be done!" —Bebe Neuwirth left, who won a Tony for playing Velma Kelly in the revival of Chicago, on Chita Rivera who originated the role singing "All That Jazz"