If you're graduating from high school, and you come from a lower income family, you're effectively given two options. One is get a four-year college degree; two is work at a low-wage job, potentially for the rest of your life. We've got to do better on that front. We have to provide more options.
When I graduated from Brown, I had a very limited conception of jobs, careers, and what I wanted to do. Basically, I figured I should do some kind of thought work that paid well, but I wasn't sure what.
I think my mum wanted me to join the army or something, or become a surveyor - something with good career prospects.
I was an infantry Marine, and there are only so many things you can do when you get out of the military that you can apply your job to. Either a janitor or a cop. I tried to do both of those things because what else are you going to do?
I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.
It's funny when people ask an actor what they want to play next, because you don't get to decide what you play. I don't know. I can only say this: I don't want to and have no interest in playing a plastic surgeon. That's for sure. I'm open to anything else.
I hate the school of thought that says work is work and that you have to be unhappy at work because that's what work is. I totally respect the fact that not everyone has the choices that I have, and that some people have to work jobs that they don't like because they don't have any other options.
There's an awful lot of choices in the world as far as what one can do for a living. It's best to be familiar with as many sectors of the working world as you can be so you'll be better at your creative job anyway.
I have always been fascinated by fashion. I never had any interest in waiting tables or bar-tending, so retail was sort of my best option.
Both my parents are professors, and I never really saw people do any other jobs, so I didn't really know how to want a different kind of job.
Hell, if I didn't do stunts, I'd have had to be a bartender, or something else that didn't pay well.
As an actor, I feel there isn't much to explore on TV. So, if I get better work as a host, why wouldn't I do it?
No amount of preaching, exhortation, sympathy, benevolence, will render the condition of our working women what it should be, so long as the kitchen and needle are substantially their only resources.
As I have said several times, Veterans are not a monolithic group that has the same needs and desires. They want to be fulfilled, support their family and have options after their years in uniform. A job in government should not be the only option.
