Top 40 Laura Benanti Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t wait for people to tell you who you are. Show them.”

— Laura Benanti

2. “I don’t like the word “brand.” When I see people creating a brand, it feels disingenuous.”

— Laura Benanti

3. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

4. “Some people have jobs where other people don’t clap for them. I don’t understand that.”

— Laura Benanti

5. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

6. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

7. “Musical theatre is my first love.”

— Laura Benanti

8. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

9. “I do think that there is an almost more old fashioned mentality to the way musical theatre people and actresses especially are treated.”

— Laura Benanti

10. “I’ve met a lot of famous people that I just thought were so unbelievable. For me, meeting Julie Andrews was probably the highlight of my life.”

— Laura Benanti

11. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

12. “I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness – there’s nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you’ve ever had.”

— Laura Benanti

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

— Laura Benanti

14. “Well, I’m grateful for all the experiences that I’ve had.”

— Laura Benanti

15. “I learned to stop saying yes because I then have to back out. I’ve been trying to prioritize my health.”

— Laura Benanti

16. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

17. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

18. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

19. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

20. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

21. “I haven’t been trying to be anything other than myself.”

— Laura Benanti

22. “I am a feminist with a capital ‘F’ .”

— Laura Benanti

23. “My parents were in ‘Brigadoon’ on Broadway when I was a couple of years old.”

— Laura Benanti

24. “Just because you’re a belter doesn’t make you funny; it just means that’s how your pipes are set up.”

— Laura Benanti

25. “I really do love the Muppets. My sister used to call them the Muffets. She’d be like, “Can we watch the Muffets?” So anything that reminds me of how adorable my sister was, I’m a big fan of.”

— Laura Benanti

26. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

27. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

28. “I think that every therapist that I know, including my dad and my sister, have their own issues. But that empathy is what makes them good at their job.”

— Laura Benanti

29. “I’m such a goody two-shoes, I don’t even taste the fruit at the grocery store. Like oh, are these grapes good? I can’t even do that. I’m that much of a rule-follower.”

— Laura Benanti

30. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

31. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

32. “There were TVs everywhere. When we weren’t on stage, we were watching what America was watching and rooting for each other and our leading lady. That experience was incredible, and I was just enjoying myself.”

— Laura Benanti

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

— Laura Benanti

34. “If we had an audience to play to, the performance would have gotten too big. Sizing our performances to the camera was an important journey for me at least.”

— Laura Benanti

35. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

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

— Laura Benanti

37. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

38. “Maybe a young woman will go see a show by a woman, or starring a woman about women’s issues, and that will help her get to that quiet place inside of herself where she can then explore what it means to be a woman to her.”

— Laura Benanti

39. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

40. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

41. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

42. “I find human behavior to be fascinating, which is probably why I’m an actor, and I think that there are a lot of dangerous misconceptions about mental illness in our society, and I would like to be a part of remedying that – particularly the stigma that surrounds so many mental illnesses.”

— Laura Benanti

43. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

44. “I’ve always wanted to go to Austria.”

— Laura Benanti

45. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

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

— Laura Benanti

47. “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.”

— Laura Benanti

48. “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.”

— Laura Benanti