Career Discovery Quotes

Right about when I turned 13, I realized that women could be jockeys, from my travels to the racetrack with my dad.

I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor. I just really, really amused myself and my friends with memorizing entire George Carlin or Steve Martin albums.

I didn't realize I was working in a family medium.

I started preparing meals for my family when I was 12 because both of my parents worked, but I didn't know that it was something I could make a career out of until I had my daughter and realized there were people out there who were interested in learning how to prepare a quick meal.

No matter what went down, music was always going to be a part of my life. What ultimately happened is that, over a period of time, I just kind of looked around and when like, 'Wow! I'm actually making a living doing this.'

I didn't dream about being a director. I didn't know I wanted to do something with film until the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

When I was younger, I didn't know television presenting was a thing, which is how I totally got my foot in the door. But I didn't really know that was a job. I never really had a TV or watched TV, and I really just wanted to be an actor.

When I was a freshman in high school, I read a book about the making of Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' called 'The Art of Animation.' It was this weird revelation for me, because I hadn't considered that people actually get paid to make cartoons.

I was in theater when I was in elementary, middle school and high school. I didn't know it would be an actual profession for me. I didn't think of it as a reality.

I've not really been angling to be a comedian. I knew comics and I loved them and I loved being funny, but I didn't understand the whole concept of becoming one. My first couple of times on stage, I was like, "This is what I'm doing for sure." I was so excited.

I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.

What made me want to be an actor? Ah, I'm not really sure, to be honest. I was one of those little kids who did it around school, and then I got to university and made lots of bad plays and short films, and then midway through that, it suddenly dawned on me that this might be a satisfying way to earn a living, if that was at all feasible.

I grew up around food and in a restaurant, so it never dawned on me that this was a thing to do; it just was. Then I found it as a profession in my mid-twenties after years of bad decisions and depression. The first step was going to the bookstore and learning about this craft. Then applying in kitchens and just getting to work.

When I was, like, 15, I realized there could be a career in making people laugh - like, you could get paid to do it. That was insane to me.

I never thought about 'being' in comedy when I grew up, because I didn't know it was a real job. But looking back, it's the only thing I ever really cared about.

I just wanted to do it all. Film and television was so strange to me because I didn't grow up in the business, I didn't know anything about it, and I had never been on set before. But, from the minute I got on set and did 'Old School,' I was like, 'I want to do this!'

I didn't have any idea that I would be able to have a career in film.

When I decided to go to university I didn't know what I wanted to do. When I had an opportunity to take an elective I took Drama by chance, even though I'd never taken a Drama course or even been in a play in high school. Two years later I was majoring in Drama and I knew I wanted to be an actor.

And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I'd won the lottery.

I thought I wanted to be an inventor but then discovered you couldn't study inventing!

I just fell into modeling.

When I was younger I didn't really know what a director did: I knew I loved movies and I figured the actors made it up! And then when you get to 12 years old you start thinking, What does a director do? It was really an organic beginning: this looks like something I want to do, I can't believe people get paid to do it!

I never thought I would become an actor. When I started out, I never thought I would come so far. Acting was not my passion. When I experienced the highs of being an actor, I started liking it, and it gradually became my passion.

The most important thing is to talk to people that have jobs that you might like and to see what they say the job involves.

In college, I didn't perform so much, but when I graduated is when I discovered Second City. Then I realized, 'Oh, there are people who can focus on comedy and especially improvisational comedy and make a career out of it.'