Once, right before a show, I realized I'd forgotten shoes. I didn't want to wear my flip-flops onstage because I could trip. I ended up going barefoot, which actually worked out because it became my 'thing.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I know I will never wear sandals now anywhere. I got in a fight in the back of a grocery store when I was really young, like 14 or something. And I remember my feet were so torn up afterwards because I lost my sandals in the middle of the fight. My toenail was missing. It just sucked.
I was shying away from acting for the longest time - because of having such big shoes to fill.
I've done all of them except for Oprah. My shoes were on Oprah but they ran out of time so I wasn't on. I left my shoes in Chicago so they could put them on the show.
I remember walking onstage in the first performance, and something hit me like a brick wall, and I just knew at that moment that this is something I had to do for the rest of my life, and I've never looked back.
Growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry. But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.
The stage and the live crowd taught me to think on my feet, to improvise.
I always wear the shoes of the character a week before going on set; the idea of just putting on a new pair of shoes on the first day of filming is just horrific.
Sometimes, thinking on your feet can be the most creative. Constrained circumstances can bring the best out of you. Some of the most successful shows come out of shoestring invention.
I loved shoes. I had my little ballerina flats, and my mom never wore heels. But when I was about three or four, she got a job where she had to wear the tiniest heels. I was obsessed.
I always like to sing barefoot, but when I first started doing these dates with the symphonies, I of course thought I should clean up my act, being a Jewish girl from Long Island with a little bit of a trucker mouth. So I wore a gown and some high heels.