“I went bald when I was 18. My father cried. He cried about many things. But it allowed me to play older men in summer stock.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“We did a thing that we would call we call ‘hirstories.’ H – I – R – S – T – O – R – Y. I would enact a young Mort. And that always felt – it was so funny – it felt more difficult than playing Maura.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is part of our constitutional rights and it belongs to everybody.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“That’s just me and my own body issues – I think I’m fat and bald and old and ugly.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I can only speak for me… but in my life, I find that, in sobriety, I feel much more, and I have much more depth. I also feel – not to segue, but as being a parent of five kids, I can bring much more to my acting, and so I’m all about anything that gives you more feeling and more depth.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“We all know about secrets – to have that pressure of something you can’t reveal. That’s universal: ‘Am I safe? Am I gonna be OK? Will my family still love and respect me?’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act. I like having to audition. It’s nice to do rehearsals. But it’s with an audience that you get to love it!”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I was a young actor who was bald, but at that time, there was a thing on television that – there was a prototype or a stereotype of a principal who was bald and mean with glasses, or there was… the angry boss who was bald.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think I have femininity, I have masculinity, but I get to use all of Jeffrey, and that’s very powerful. And this is what I always thought when I went down in my little basement in San Francisco, where I grew up, and daydreamed about being an actor: It felt like this. This is what it felt like.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I love this company. I don’t know how it was selected. It’s a bunch of machers. They mean business.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The Emmy should be an ensemble award, too. I kept howling at everyone else’s performances.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“This whole thing about winning and losing is muddy waters. But I can remember, as a young actor, just walking around this city and not being able to get arrested.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“As my manager says, ‘These are wonderful problems.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“My part had three lines. I said, ‘You look wonderful, sir,’ three times. All my friends said, ‘Do not take that role – and do not understudy. You’ll regret it the rest of your life.’ I did both of those things, and I’ve never regretted it once.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“And I’d watch George C. Scott from backstage. He was one of my mentors.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I remember going to Bob Preston’s dressing room because I was losing a laugh – as you do in a long run. He said, ‘Give me the script. That’s where you’re going off the road.’ That’s comedy. It’s never the line itself; it’s in the foundation.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I loved the gentlemanly way they treated each other. It was unlike anything I was used to. I started helping them strike the set and, at 11, began taking acting classes privately.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I came to New York late; I was already past 30.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“When I was a young boy in San Francisco, I remember being sent home from playing with a friend, and I remember the mother saying, ‘Tell Jeffrey to go home.’ And I said to the girl, ‘Why?’ She goes, ‘My mother says that you’re the people who killed Christ.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“When I was growing up, there was a character on TV; there was a character stereotype: it was personified by Mel on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I thought I was gonna do Lear, but I’m gonna do Maura.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a female transgender on television.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I did not know that you had to learn makeup. I just thought you went, ‘Oh, I’m gonna put on some makeup.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“You want to feel, ‘I know that character.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I kind of like not knowing how to do something – it’s more exciting.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“My new toy is not knowing, because it’s very creative. I’m the guy who likes to get in the car and get lost.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“You just put your head down and do the work.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I grew up in San Fransisco in a very liberal community. My environment was very, very open and very liberal.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think of everything as comedy, but I don’t think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There’s always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“There’s a wonderful adage in acting that you’re stuck with the character, but the character is also stuck with you.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The real road, to me, was within the actor, within myself, within my own personality. How much Jeffrey can I find, and how much of Jeffrey could I access? What parts of Jeffrey have I never used for Hank or for George or Oscar? – and that was a delight.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I can’t say enough about the guts and the talents of Amazon. They’re so agile, they’re so nimble; they picked us up two weeks after we premiered, and their whole attitude is, ‘Go, go, go, go,’ so I’m very, very impressed.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I really got used to playing Maura.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“We have been treated gorgeously by Amazon.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The honor of being able to play Maura is transformative. I’m 70 years old. I should be in a reading room, reading Dickens or something.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“’Clocked’ means someone sees you for being transgender.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I don’t take off my nail polish when I go home because I’m too lazy, and they’re fine with it. Maybe the checkout at the grocery store’s not so great with it, but they’re fine with it. The distrust, the phobias, those are learned, those are taught. But the natural grace is to understand and to love.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I learned the biggest lesson just watching Ed McMahon, watching him watch Mr. Carson’s monologue.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“George Saunders’s ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ is a hands-down masterpiece – the subject of Abraham Lincoln and the genius of this author is a perfect union.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“There was a library near us in San Francisco. It was the West Portal Public Library. I would ask my father to drive me there at night and pick me up when it closed. I think he was worried about this routine but never let on. Also, I kept this a secret from my friends, as I don’t think it would have been considered the ‘coolest’ habit.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“It was the ’50s, and the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System were in fashion. I hung out in the 812 section – American theater and plays. This is where I first read Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ and was transfixed. I remember staring into space for what seemed an eternity after reading Linda Loman’s final speech.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Owning a bookstore was right up there with acting in life goals, but other than swaggering around the store, I’m not much use.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I’ve done ‘Yo Gabba Gabba!’ I’ve done… oh, it’s not called ‘Rapunzel’ anymore. ‘Tangled’, that’s it. Those are both huge.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I’ve been in three sort of… I mean, I’d say they’re groundbreaking series, if only because of the creators. One was ‘Max Headroom’, another was ‘The Larry Sanders Show’, and the third was ‘Arrested Development’.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“In Yiddish, we say, ‘Nisht ahin un nisht aher.’ It’s neither here, it’s neither there. I get more nerves than on anything I do when I’m doing multi-camera. But single-camera, I love very much.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“To you people out there, you producers and you network owners and you agents and you creative sparks, please give transgender talent a chance. Give them auditions. Give them their story. Do that.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I almost should have a shirt made: ‘Jill Soloway has changed my life…’ Not only changed my life with the opportunity to play Maura, but the opportunity and the responsibility of playing Maura.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I had a theater that was right across the street from me, and I would just go there after school and just hang out and watch… and everything seemed calmer there and nicer there and warmer there.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think I made $55 a week, and it was bliss… I was doing theater. It was all I ever wanted to do. It was so much fun, and you got paid for it, and you met people, and it’s the greatest education in the world. And in my little Greenbrier station wagon, I felt very much like a troubadour.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think Maura’is funnier than I am, wittier than I am, more intelligent than I am, and I think she’s just floating me at this point.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Love New York Presbyterian. I will do anything for them.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“There are secrets in families. That is the definition of a family.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I’m a Jewish son of Russian-Hungarian heritage parents. Humor was very important. My whole goal was to make my parents laugh. And my whole strategy as a young man was, if I could make them laugh, I could have enough time to figure out what to do next.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“When I was young kid, I used to watch Jack Benny, and I thought the minimal aspect of what he did was revelatory. I loved Jack Benny.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The day before I work, I don’t like to even look at the script and let whatever happens happen on the set. But I do prepare a lot. I’m a big believer in that.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“You can send a lot of instruction through laughter.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The shedding of any clothes, when you’re 70 years old, is tricky.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“My wife thought I was Vincent Schiavelli, and we married.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“There are times between five and seven when this house is like a bowling alley, but it’s reinspired me. My acting has gotten better because of these kids. I feel the same spirit I did when I was doing Off-Broadway.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“If you see ‘Pollock,’ I weighed almost 270 pounds.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I wanted to do well for me and for Maura. It is bigger than me. I have a responsibility. It’s incumbent upon me to do Maura the best I can.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Some people have a mandate that you can’t change.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Usually when you act, you know where you’re going, where the point is.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I am a huge believer – I always have been – in the power of comedy. That comedy will break hatred and will bring understanding.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“We are part of the zeitgeist, and we are communicating in a human, real way.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I actually got thrown into my Bar Mitzvah because my teacher, my Cantor, did not tell me that they would all say ‘amen’ at the end of each, for want of a better word, paragraph. And that threw me completely. I almost went into an Ella Fitzgerald sort of scat.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I had a bilateral lisp, and I was overweight. I was the kid who played with the flowers on the ground in the outfield during baseball. I was that kid.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I worked at The Old Globe Theater under the great baton of Craig Noel. One of the great theater heroes that we have. He was so great and so inspirational. I think I did ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. I lived in Ocean Beach, and my rent was $140 a month.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think most of my heroes are not the traditional types. A guy I was fascinated with was Buster Keaton. I just love what he did. I love that mug.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The brilliance of Jill Soloway is that while some people will give you Season Two, plus 10%, she’s just kicked it.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“People are identifying not only with the trans movement, but also the Pfefferman family. What I am noticing is people are coming up on the street and talking about their life and their family, and they say, ‘Your family is just like mine.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I’m really aging myself, but I grew up with ‘Playhouse 90’ and the plays on the air – 90 minute plays.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“You see kids walking to the bus, and they’re watching product on their phones. I’m positive that my grandkids and their grandkids are going to put on a pair of glasses and watch something.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“What’s interesting about playing Maura is that I get to use more of Jeffrey that I’ve ever used in any role, and I think that’s the remarkable part about it and truly the most surprising part about doing this role.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I was bar mitzvahed at Beth Shalom, and I had trouble. I didn’t quite get it all.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“’Dad, Dad, I’m getting married.’ ‘Sh-sh, don’t say it. Nothing, nothing. Don’t do anything.’ So he honestly – ’cause he was taught don’t celebrate – they’ll take it away from you. And his parents were taught that, and his parents and parents’ parents. Because if you did celebrate, and you were visible, it could be very, very dangerous.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I was with Robert Preston in ‘Sly Fox.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I get up and cook for my kids, who really like my scrambled eggs. Or we make pancakes and the requisite bacon. The kids either play or watch cartoons, and Daddy gets to read the ‘New York Times’ and do his puzzle.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The Tambors were conservative Jews, and we attended Temple Beth Shalom at 14th Avenue and Clement Street in San Francisco. We were the only Jewish family for miles. To me, being Jewish meant ‘otherness.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I give a speech at some colleges and corporations called ‘Performing Your Life: An Evening with Jeffrey Tambor.’ I get asked a lot of questions, and people say, ‘Your stories are wonderful. You should write a book.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“’Attaboys’ help people. I am huge on attaboy. Confidence is the great ingredient to living and art, with fidelity to self. It’s so important to surround yourself with people who give you confidence.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“They’re my instructors, and every parent will understand that.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think everyone needs to know that I steal biscotti on Delta Airlines. People need to know that.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“You know that thing where you’re trying to do the crossword puzzle, and you’re trying to fit the word that’s in your head in the puzzle, and then you go ‘Ugh!’ and you walk away, and then it comes to you. I’m interested in that moment. The release of expectation, and the release of pleasing yourself and pleasing anybody. Breaking the mindset.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Families are families are families are families.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“When I was a kid, we got up, we walked a number of paces to a television, turned it on, and changed channels.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“There was one television in the living room, and we all sat around on Sundays and watched Ed Sullivan.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think shows being sent out this way – pressing a button and 10 episodes can go out to the U.S.A., and the U.K. and Germany, it’s very cool.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I would daydream about what it would be like to be an actor. I would even do talk shows where I interviewed myself.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Lying and art are very allied. But after you lie, you get to the truth.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I lost my moorings. But you know the great thing about acting? It’s all part of the gig. You get to put it in your work.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I’m interested in people’s stories, so I decided to tell part of mine.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“Every family has that secret. Every family has that thing where you go, ‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I do remember going shopping with my mother; I think the name of the store was Ruth Atkins. I don’t know why I can remember that. It’s probably because it’s not the name.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I’m the voice of a Chipotle Burrito. The world has changed.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I don’t mind if someone yells a motto out of their car at me. ‘No touching! No touching!’ No harm is done.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The ‘Hey now’s’ are delivered as people pass me. As I just get near ear range, I hear, ‘Hey now!’ and that’s very funny.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I am the Internet guy. But the reason the ‘Onion News Empire’ was such an easy decision to make is I so trust that side of the fence now.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I cross-dressed as the judge in ‘Hill Street Blues,’ you know.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The first time I met Garry Shandling was my audition for ‘The Larry Sanders Show,’ with Garry and his casting director Francine Maisler. I can recall every minute of it. He was gracious and kind, and he read with me. He was terrific.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“So many people say they went to school on ‘The Larry Sanders Show.’”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“What can I say about a world without Garry Shandling? This is where I need Garry. He would have something pithy, and there would be a laugh, and your heart would break at the same time. He changed my life.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“The best comedy not only makes you laugh, but on the moment of the laugh, you learned.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
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