A Quote by Allison Tolman

I did a lot of commercial and theater work when I got out of school and was living in Dallas, and I moved to Chicago to go through the Second City Conservatory Program.

Allison Tolman

Quote Topics

Chicago City Commercial Conservatory Dallas Did Go Got Living Lot Moved Out Program School Second Second City Theater Through Work

Quote Author

Allison Tolman
American - Actress
Born: November 18, 1981

I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A.

Kevin Dunn

I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.

Stephen Colbert

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

Tina Fey

I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again.

Steve Carell

When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the city.

Allison Tolman

I really wanted to go to a city and get involved in a theater scene and a theater community. I had some friends who had moved out to Chicago and had said really good things about it and about the work. I didn't care at that time about making money.

Timothy Simons

Coming out of Dallas and doing commercial work in Dallas - if you had improv background in Dallas, then you were instantly shot to the top of the list of commercial bookings because they loved improvisers because you could elevate the material.

Allison Tolman

I was at Second City L.A., going through the conservatory, and I graduated in 2004 and I got 'SNL' in 2005.

Bill Hader

I was always very theatrical. I went to theater school in a conservatory program.

Gabrielle Bernstein

I went to college and did theatre. After that, I spent about three years in Seattle doing French theater and community theater and sorting it all out. Then I applied to graduate school and got accepted, so I started pursuing my master's in theatre at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

Darby Stanchfield

I always honestly dreamed of coming to Second City in Chicago, although I've never even been there to see a show. But I did a ton of sketch comedy at the Second City in LA, which (at the time, in a different location) wasn't really a theater, it was just a space where you took some classes.

Simon Helberg

I didn't take theater or anything. We didn't have a very good theater program. It was in western Utah - was a really small school. It wasn't developed. We didn't have the funds to do anything like that, but I did act all through high school in films because Disney Channel would shoot movies out there.

Olesya Rulin

I moved to Chicago when I was 28, and I wasn't completely idealistic about going to Second City and making a living from comedy, but I knew it would be great for the resume.

Allison Tolman

In actor's career, I had a fair amount of denial, which I think is possibly in the genes, where I just couldn't go to, "Maybe this won't work out." I just couldn't do it. My mind just refused to go there. I don't mean there weren't low periods. There were plenty. But I remember arriving in New York and I was maybe 32, and I didn't have an agent. I came from Chicago, where I had gone to school and worked and got my sea legs, so to speak, and I remember walking out of the subway, walking the streets, standing in front of the theater and saying, "I will work in this theater."

Ann Dowd

What brought me to L.A. was work! I moved to Chicago after college - I went to Kalamazoo - did my nerd thing, graduated, and moved to Chicago to pursue improv.