Artistic Upbringing Quotes

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters.

My father was a TV scriptwriter. He would perform his dialogue out loud, while my mum transcribed it at the typewriter. So I grew up thinking that plucking characters out of the air was an extremely normal way to behave.

Growing up in New York with artist parents - a very liberal environment, where we were always encouraged to challenge the status quo - I think for a long time I confused jingoism with patriotism. And that is a mistake.

For me, the greatest good fortune I have being raised by actors is I came in knowing that a career is the ebb and flow.

My childhood shaped the person I became. It was artistic, musical and left-wing.

My whole background, my whole life was just lots and lots of theater, a lot of that being musical theater.

My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything.

My parents lived, breathed, ate and slept theatre. Emotions were right on the surface. Growing up, the unreal had as much importance as the real.

I come from a family of musicians.

I grew up always around music through my father - I would play in music studios with him as I was growing up - and my high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts.

I was a dancer, and my father was a dancer, so I really grew up in that environment.

I spent all of my childhood at a performance art camp. Putting on plays, it was more like commedia dell'arte. It wasn't career-oriented in any way. It was more fun and therapeutic, so I never really thought of it as something I would end up doing. I was more convinced I was going to be a painter.

A lot of my family members were performers, and my cousins are comedians and actresses. From a very young age, movies were really important. They were given a lot of value.

Both of my parents were incredibly supportive of me being in any arts, because they were both in the arts. They weren't the typical story of, "Oh, get a real job. You need to make money." They basically said, "Yup, be an artist. You'll be broke your whole life but you'll be happy."

I was in art school since I was five years old. I've always been to art school.

I'm not from a theatrical background where people do like to work it out on some stage space.

My mother was a choreographer, so music has always been around.

I come from very creative parents.

I have grown up watching plays at Shivaji Mandir and used to participate in plays in school, too.

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians.

My sister was in ballet growing up. I spent almost the entirety of 7 through 12 backstage at Lincoln Center, just running around, waiting for 'The Nutcracker' to end.

Both of my folks were into art. My dad was an art collector, my mom had a little kiln in our basement, and we would make pottery. I think from about age five on, they sent me to art classes, and I was a huge colorer.

I was in acting classes from the age of 9, dance classes, music classes - my mom put a lot of energy and attention into me, so no matter what happened in my life, I always had this basis of discipline. So I really worked hard for everything I had from a very early age.

I had a very artistic bohemian childhood. My father was an actor and a mime.

As a child growing up among artists I learned to think of a picture not as a finished product exposed for the admiration of the virtuosi, but as the visible record, lying about the house, of an attempt to solve a definite problem in painting.