Unconventional Background Quotes

I didn't go to university. I didn't go to culinary school, barely made it through high school.

I did pretty good for a guy who never finished high school and used to yodel at square dances.

I haven't had to do anything outside of show business my whole life. I've never been a waiter. I've only worked and gotten paid. It hasn't been a classic example of someone slogging through the business.

I'm not the pedigree kid. I'm not classically trained. I didn't come from the fancy home, no.

I'm not a politician. I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a country boy.

I was a kiddie pool attendant, and I was a white rapper. That's not going to get you a job on Wall Street.

I wasn't even a theater kid in high school. I studied classical piano, and I ran track.

I am a young woman, with a regional accent, from a working class family, who has had a pretty standard education. So far, so ordinary. But in the places I've worked, one or more of these things would put me in the minority.

Several things about Reagan are unusual in a public man. He was not a typical politician at all, but a private man in public life.

When I first came to America, I went into William Morris Endeavor for a meeting and I was like, "Yeah, I'm from Australia and I do comedy." I think that one of the reasons they signed me is because I wasn't like any other girl. Maybe girls don't get encouraged. The ones who get encouraged to move to Hollywood are the prettiest ones in their hometown of Iowa, or something. Whereas for me, where I come from in the western suburbs of Sydney, no one ever thought professional actors would come from there. Even my own family was like, "No one would want you on a show."

I find myself apologising for not being a proper actor. I never intended to be involved in the film industry and still do feel that, with the exception of a couple of brief skirmishes with the film industry.

Obviously, signing on with Puma right when I turned pro, it's been a great fit for me to show off my colorful lifestyle as far as where I grew up and how I grew up, growing up on a public driving range and growing up around action sports my whole life. Not exactly the normal road that guys take to get to the PGA Tour.

As I talk about strengths and weaknesses in academic economics, one interesting fact you are entitled to know is that I never took a course in economics. And with this striking lack of credentials, you may wonder why I have the chutzpah to be up here giving this talk. The answer is I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it.

I'm not a film-school guy. I was a high-school dropout. I was on a nuclear submarine. I was an electrician. I was a house painter.

People really do make the assumption that I had some weirdo Hollywood upbringing, but my parents are incredibly down-to-earth people who worked really hard to raise us in a way that was health.

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing.

I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking.

Look, I like my music, and I don't have a conventional background for a politician, but I'm pretty conventional in many senses.

My family didn't come from fame. No one was musical in my family except for me.

Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political change. Like Kennedy, he grew up in unusual circumstances that distance him from ordinary American life.

My stepfather was in the navy, so I got to know a side of Chile that is not what you would expect from an artist.

It helps being from somewhere other than Hollywood, not having grown up with that sense of film-making. I really wasn't exposed to that as a young woman.

My background is not typical of a lawyer or a DPP. My dad was a toolmaker before he retired, so he worked in a factory all his life.

I was this person with this weird last name from New York that no one had ever heard of. But my screen test I guess, according to him, was the best. So I got the part, which was incredible.

My upbringing was very un-Hollywood... I was born in New York and grew up on a ranch. I was never really smitten by the business in those days, never a fan type - just a basic kid watching TV.