A Quote by Ed Begley, Jr.

I wanted to be an actor my whole young life. My dad was an actor, obviously - he won an Academy Award, but I had no idea what was involved. I had all the wrong ideas about acting.
My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?
I had said bye-bye to acting, in a way, but once an actor, always an actor. Life has got other plans for me. Like, I did not want to be an actor - I wanted to be an architect or astronaut - and 'Daddy' happened, and the rest is history.
Even Arnold's adviser says he was shocked by his decision to run. I mean, his people were backstage that night and they had no idea. He totally fooled them. Who knew Arnold was that good of an actor? If he had done that in a movie, he'd have an Academy Award by now.
I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
A new kind of award has been added -- the deathbed award. It is not an award of any kind. Either the recipient has not acted at all, or was not nominated, or did not win the award the last few times around. It is intended to relieve the guilty conscience of the Academy members and save face in front of the public. The Academy has the horrible taste to have a star, choking with emotion, present this deathbed award so that there can be no doubt in anybody's mind why the award is so hurriedly given. Lucky is the actor who is too sick to watch the proceedings on television.
I had success as an actor relatively early. When I was 22, I got nominated for an Academy Award for The Last Picture Show, so that road, you know, had the least resistance. I was doing my music all that time, but it's pretty hard to turn down these great movie offers. And my father counseled me; he said, "You know, one of the wonderful things about acting is that you can incorporate all of your interests into the different parts you play." I'm glad I listened to the old man, because that's the way it turned out.
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, 'I did not choose acting; acting chose me.' I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football.
I had no idea when I graduated from high school and then from graduate school what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that I was ever going to be an actor.
I come from Nova Scotia, and I'd never seen a theater or been inside of a theater. When I was 17, my dad asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I thought I would like to be an actor. I didn't have any idea what it was to be an actor. None. I'd wanted to be either an actor or a sculptor, which are both essentially the same thing. That's how it all started for me.
I had known that I'd wanted to be an actor from a very early age, but I had always known that I wanted to have a dual career. I wanted to be an actor, and I also at that time wanted to be a rock star.
Being an actor only came about because Arnaud Desplechin, the guy who did 'Kings and Queen', had this curious idea to think that I could be an actor, but I had never acted before, and I was supposed to direct my own film!
My idea was always to start with a small press and then move up to a national press. I had those goals for my career from the time I was a very young woman. I wanted to win a local award, then I wanted a state or national award. Small press, big press. Some women fantasize about their weddings, their husbands, and children. I fantasized about what I wanted to accomplish with my books.
Virtually all my conscious life I had been involved in theatre - I had been a child actor - but as a young man who had experienced the 1960s, British theatre seemed remote from my aspirations in life - theatre was still a posh thing, a middle-class thing, something for an elite.
I had been nominated for an Academy Award for my performance as Sandy Lester, Dustin Hoffman's neurotic, struggling actress girlfriend, in 'Tootsie.' Under Sydney Pollack's direction, 'Tootsie' had been a runaway hit starring Dustin as an unemployed actor who pretends to be a woman in order to land a role in a soap opera.
I was 14, when I wanted to be an actor. My parents were basically like, "This is a very hard life, and you have to be really serious about it, and show us that you're serious about it. You can't drop out of school." They strongly encouraged me not to act professionally until I finished college, which I didn't. And I think they should have been horrified! It's a really hard life. I'd be really scared if I had a child who wanted to be an actor.
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