A Quote by Jennifer Jason Leigh
I loved acting as a kid because I was kind of shy, so it brought me out of myself. Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible. It wasn't like some idea of going to Hollywood; it was in my backyard. I lived two blocks from Grauman's Chinese Theatre growing up. It was what people did. It's an industry town. So it wasn't some far-off fantasy, it was like "Oh yeah, when you grow up, you do this because that's what people do here."
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Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible.
Growing up in Hollywood it seemed like every kid was the child of some star. We had no idea that other people would think we were special, because there was no other lifestyle to compare it to.
I loved acting as a kid because I was kind of shy, so it brought me out of myself.
The whole idea of doing the Hollywood thing never even occurred to me. When you grow up on the East coast, Hollywood seems like this fantasy land and you don't think that people can actually make a living there.
When I started acting, one of the first things I learned was - especially in Hollywood - was branding. I'm a tall guy. I'm like, 'Yeah, that's probably going to be my foot in the door,' because that's my impression on everybody. I'm an athletic guy, and I think, because I grew up disliking jocks so much, that became, like, the character for me.
I think it just seems like something that somebody else does, like they raise actors somewhere in Ohio, and once in a while, people go and pick their actors and move to Hollywood. It seemed like such a distant idea. But then, as I started growing up, I'm like, 'Oh, this is an occupation.'
I'm a kid who grew up in a small town and started acting when he was seven for no reason and got lucky. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. I feel like some people, especially child stars, act out because they don't know how to handle the pressure.
Growing up in Hollywood it seemed like every kid was the child of some star.
All my friends were doing just dumb stuff that kids do, like making out with people at parties and starting to date... I didn't know any gay people growing up or any queer people growing up, and so I just really felt alone and kind of lost, and I just wasn't experiencing life.
When you grow up, some areas of the world are out of your knowledge - especially when I grew up, in the '70s and '80s. Now, you have access to everything, but back then you did not because of the way the media was, and society imposed more directions, structures, and restrictions. It's not like art was prohibited, but art was not something that the people around me presented. So I developed it very much on my own growing up.
Growing up on Mad Men with so many incredible actors and then going on to other things with amazing people, I never had any formal acting training, but they are all acting schools, basically. Just watching and learning from the best is insane. It's like having an internship and watching all these amazing people doing their work. You just soak it up like a sponge, hopefully.
You have to realize that for some of these people - definitely me when I was growing up - you treat every day like it's your last, because that's the reality of your situation. You never know when someone's going to go, because you're living in a war zone. It's almost like you're in a jungle, and you're just waiting for the predator to catch everybody one by one. So everybody cherishes each other. Instead of calling people the n-word, you're calling people "loved one." There is a level of appreciation for brothers and sisters in the hood.
I guess it's kind of the obvious thing for me to do 'cuz it's what I grew up listening to. The songs growing up and everything kind of seem like old music to them, but to me, it's just... good music. And of course I did grow up in England in the 21st Century and that does come into it as well.
From as early as I can remember, I wanted to have something to do with the acting business. I was a TV junkie as a kid and I think, because I grew up in a small town where I couldn't imagine myself staying there and couldn't see myself being any of the people that I was surrounded by in this town, I just knew that I wanted a different kind of a life, but I didn't know what that meant and I didn't know how.
It's like losing a son because I loved Michael and Michael loved me. But you know, as when people grow up and they make their own decisions and they move forward, there's a distance, and I think that Michael in some cases might have gone too far with some of the things he was doing.
When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood - and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.
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