Known for her big, swelling voice, Idina Menzel has found herself in the homes of millions of adoring fans. Whether as part of the musical Wicked, the animated movie Frozen or in solo albums, Menzel stuns with her giant voice.
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But fans may wonder what the 52-year-old New York City-born award-winning performer has to say about life and love, her work, her career and the world around her outside of her popular songs.
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Without further ado, these are the 20 best Idina Menzel quotes.
1. “I have a wide spectrum, a wide demographic. I have the young girls, I have the gay community, I have many regular theatergoers. I do feel a tremendous responsibility and pride to be a role model for some of these young people.”
2. “I keep saying, the older I get, the younger my audience gets. Because ‘Wicked’ and ‘Rent’ and ‘Glee,’ each one was a young audience, so it’s a great thing to have, so then you know that as they get older and have kids, they’ll maybe still buy tickets to my shows when I’m 80 and in Vegas!”
3. “My husband and I grew up with parents who supported our passion, and we’re grateful to them for that. It really helps you find your identity when you’re younger. It helps you become a really well-rounded person, the more you can show from different perspectives. The arts show us empathy, which is so important.”
4. “All performers get on stage because they need to feel love from an audience. I might appear confident, but those three seconds before I get out there, I’m a mess. But I have to take the risk; otherwise, I’d be miserable and would feel like I wasn’t seeing through my personal destiny.”
5. “I’m constantly trying to work on the person that I am and work on my shortcomings, and I guess I want people to know that it’s ok to be a work in progress, as long as you keep trying to figure it out. But that search and that discovery is what makes life kind of rich, and it’s what makes life rich… period.”
6. “I always like to sing barefoot.”
7. “As much as I appreciate people putting me in the category of these very acrobatic belters, I feel like my strength is my… interpretation and my truthfulness with songs, and I don’t want young people to think it’s all about the high notes that they have to hit.”
8. “I used to be someone that needed nine hours of sleep; otherwise, I didn’t think I was going to sound good when I sang, and I was very disciplined and anal about my preparation. When you become a parent, there just isn’t that time, you know?”
9. “I pretty much have no life outside of the theatre. I go home every night, and I put the TV on, and I veg out and order food.”
10. “I think as women, the smarter and more powerful we are, the more it can be threatening and alienating to other people, more than with men. That’s something we need to support each other with.”
11. “As an artist, you have to express yourself. I make no excuses for my versatility. I grew up singing classical arias, but I love rock n’ roll and jazz standards.”
12. “The cool thing is that, unlike film, the theatre roles for women get better and better as you get older.”
13. “The more success you get, you start to be harder on yourself or more afraid of the looking glass. You have to learn to build a thicker skin because people are paying more attention.”
14. “That’s what I love about songwriting—that you can write something about your own experiences and think it’s completely specific to you, and then people can take away a completely different meaning for themselves. I really love that. I think you’ve been successful at writing a song when it has a larger life than yourself.”
15. “Who am I, if I’m not this singer with big high notes? I identify with my voice. But I’m more than just the acrobatics.”
16. “I’d been a wedding singer through college, but after a few years of doing my best renditions of jazz standards to clinking glasses and the sound of forks on salad, I thought, ‘Oh God, if this is all I do, I’ll never be able to live with myself.'”
17. “There has to be a balance between power and vulnerability. That’s something I feel I have in my own life, something I struggle with and—on a good day—like about myself.”
18. “I’m smart enough to know to work with smart people.”
19. “Nerves are good. They keep you alive.”
20. “You can’t be the vulnerable, transparent, raw person required to be an artist, and then cover that stuff up and meet the world with some kind of armor on. It just doesn’t go.”
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