Career Alternatives Quotes

Had I not become a professional golfer, I think I would have pursued some type of career in aviation.

Had I not been an actor, I would have been counting cash at my father's restaurant or supervising activities in the kitchen. I did it for a year when I was in college. I put on 10 kgs and then it hit me that I couldn't do that anymore.

Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

If I weren't acting, I think I'd want to be a professional hockey player.

If my dramatic career doesn't work out, I will go on to research and find cures for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's and other motor neuron diseases. It's a very exciting field of research. But I'd like to continue in drama, so it wouldn't be very smart of me if I blew this amazing opportunity with an inappropriate lifestyle.

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.

I've never wanted to be anything other than an actor. I started performing on Broadway when I was 8 years old. My first night on stage, I told my mom, "This is what I want to do. I was always a very out-there kid. The sad thing about acting business is it's so fleeting. If I couldn't do that, I was going to go to school and study law and become a lawyer. But I probably would have been miserable, or they would have had some very theatrical court sessions.

If I wasn't an actress, I'd be a chef. I'd love to open a restaurant.

Obviously, the basketball career doesn't last forever.

When you get to a certain age, you have to make a decision for yourself: if you want to get old in the industry, and you want to play maybe a few parts that come along now and then - or what else in life interests you?

I'm either going to have the career I want doing films, or I'll do something else - I'll be gone.

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter.

Every hooker I ever speak to tells me that it beats the hell out of waitressing.

I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.

I would've been intrigued by being a film director. I would've been intrigued by politics. I thought about architecture.

I always think that I would have become an actor if I hadn't been a soccer player.

If I had not become an actress, I would be a journalist or a psychologist: I like to analyze the mind and be involved in political moments that change history.

It's difficult to say what I would be doing if I wasn't a footballer, but I probably would have sold coal like my father. Studying was never my thing, and I would surely have ended up working with my dad.

As I was saying before I was interrupted ... I believe the last thing I said was 'There must be a better way to make a living than this.' Well, I've looked - and there isn't.

Man, I don't wanna do what all the other guys do. I don't wanna end up in the booth after the games telling you what I think and talking smack about the guys on the floor when they are a lot better than that. I wanna be different. I don't wanna be known as Commentator Shaq. I wanna be a doctor or something good. I wanna be Dr. Shaq, Officer Shaq, Deputy Shaq.

I've always said I would want to be a funeral director if I wasn't an actor.

I came into the industry at a time when there weren't a lot of choices to what you could do.

I always say, when I play the first few notes and people scream... if you're tired of that, you should try retail. What else are you looking for?

If I hadn't become a model I thought of doing many things. I wanted to be an archaeologist at one point, but I was a little kid. I wanted to be a social worker.

I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.