Kelli O'Hara
Kelli O'Hara
Kelli Christine O'Hara is an American actress and singer. She has appeared on Broadway and Off-Broadway in many musicals since making her Broadway debut as a replacement in Jekyll & Hyde in 2000. A six-time Tony Award nominee, her first nomination was for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the 2005 production of The Light in the Piazza. Her subsequent nominations were for The Pajama Game, South Pacific, Nice Work If You Can Get Itand The Bridges of Madison...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionStage Actress
Date of Birth16 April 1976
CityElk City, OK
CountryUnited States of America
Our natural thing to do when we break away from our parents and our family is to decide in how many ways they were wrong and bad, and the older you get you start to realize, "By 'bad' I mean 'different'" and then you get a little bit older and you think, "And by 'different' I mean 'pretty awesome but just not like me.'"
I think a lot of the way I live my life is not just for me, which has sometimes been a burden. A lot of the choices I make are in order to make them [my parents] proud.
I think in this business [acting] there's the option to do a lot of things and say, "I don't care. I'm just going to do what I want," but what I do affects a lot of people.
We can make choices, but we can be vulnerable; we can do the wrong thing, but the wrong thing for all the right reasons. I think it [life] is basically about forgiveness, and not about someone else forgiving you, but you forgiving yourself. I think we all want a lot of that.
Sometimes I think people are famous because they're themselves and they do a role and you see them do it.
American theatre, to me, represents zeroing down on what the need is to get inside the personal hearts of people. I think it's really beautiful if we can keep doing that instead of just fluffing everything up and hiding again.
I'm trying to think of myself at a quiet time. I need to do better with a quiet mind because I'm constantly going and I think that's what feeds me. I've been that way my whole life. But I don't think I picture things so much as I talk them through. Words, words, words. Words and melody.
I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.
I've always wanted to do a Shakespeare play.
Everyone's story is different, and we can't really be inside them.
I don't ever sing classically when I am singing a contemporary score - I kind of try to fit in whatever needs to happen.
Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.
My great-grandfather, Peter O'Hara, was born in Ireland, I believe, in County Clare. His father, my great-great-grandfather, had actually come to America a generation before when times were very bad in Ireland. He worked in the Pennsylvania area and did well with horses and farming.
I'm a mother, and when you have children, there's a protection. You'll do a lot to protect them, to do what's best for them.