My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.

I don't like to bad-mouth other shows, but I was very disturbed after seeing 'Starlight Express.' It had very little to do with musical comedy as I know it. It had to do with sound and spectacle and records and technology and amplification.

I did a benefit one night at Carnegie Hall with Bono and Lady Gaga and Rufus Wainwright.

When I was eight, I went to the theatre, and I remember looking at the stage afterward and pointing and saying, 'I want to do that.' I don't think that's ever changed.

I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' and jokes such as describing current events as 'ancient history.' Boy, did the audience roar at that one.

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.

Being at the Play House, the only way I could see my life was that I would be an actor in a company, doing a lead role one week, a small part the next. That's what I thought I was going to be.

For a few years, there were three shows running on Broadway that I had all opened: 'Chicago,' 'Wicked' and 'Anything Goes.'

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.

The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.

I spent 15 years of not being able to get a job creating a role on Broadway.

I don't look like Brad Pitt.

Looking back now, I can see that my dad was a real fighter. A lot of people thought, 'Why don't you keep the Jewish stuff quiet?' They were anti-Semitic Jews. People who were afraid. People who came here and made it and anglicized themselves and didn't want to associate with their past.

My father was the one who used to stand up in the middle of a number to flutter his lips and make sputtering sounds into lyrics.

I fell so hard for the theater. I knew it was a place where you can sort out your life.

I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.

I was small growing up, and to make matters worse, I wore glasses, and my mother dressed me in attention-getting outfits. I was a target of bullies.

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

I really didn't feel that my motion picture career was going the way I wanted it to go.

I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.

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

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

I'm very slow. I'm a slow learner.

I worked with a lot of leading ladies: Bebe Neuwirth, Anne Rankin, Bernadette Peters, Liza Minnelli. They're all phenomenal talents.

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 loved being in the theater. It was a place of enormous excitement and happiness and safety and respect and dignity. It was a place where, if you did your job, you weren't a kid - you were a full person worthy of respect from all the adults in the company.

I was totally delighted, interested in, and amused by my stint on 'Voyager.'

Acting always affects every part of your life because it's such a solitary, lonely, and thrilling circumstance that you're taking on someone else's character and that responsibility. It's exhausting.

The theater is the place where people create ideas and send messages out, and you learn, and I think it's a fair venue for disagreement and enlightenment.

I am concerned about the musical theater, selfishly, because I love it.

I wasn't sure what it would take to make it in the theater, but despite the struggle, that was all I ever really wanted.

Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.

I'm always interested in the challenge of doing something new.

You can be taking two steps forward as an actor, but if a movie doesn't make money, you might as well be taking two steps backwards. It's all about economics.

There's a lot going on in the world that's very disturbing: rewriting the Holocaust; pseudo-historians rewriting history itself. And we're dealing with a terrorist mentality that involves whole nations.

I always sort of saw myself as different from a musician.

'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.

There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.

I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.

I came to realize, along with being attracted to girls, I had similar feelings for boys.

I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.

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.'

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 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.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.

There's a civility that has always been a part of me.

I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.

When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.

I'd like to direct something at the Public.