A Quote by Ben Mendelsohn

At 15 I had moved out of my parents' place, and my options were looking pretty narrow. But I had this acting thing and I just wanted to be able to keep going because it was really good. That was all I wanted.
I moved to Paris and I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I moved in with a friend who had an apartment there and was looking for a roommate. Quickly, I discovered that I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do, but I wanted it to be a little creative.
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place. But I kept on acting, and eventually, I just dropped out of school and continued acting.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. I always wanted to pursue either music or comics, so when the opportunity came from comics publisher Fantagraphics for my brothers Jaime and Mario and I to make a comic book together, we jumped at the chance: "Let's just do it and see what happens." Really, we weren't sure where we were going to go with it. We thought our work was good enough to be out there, but we didn't know that the response was going to be pretty good, pretty quick.
I moved when I was 16. I had no clue what to expect in moving to L.A. I had no clue, really, about what acting was. I just knew that I wanted to do it.
I've been acting since I was young because I wanted to, not because my parents wanted me to. My dad is a principal and mom is a middle school counselor, so acting was like, "Eh, whatever. As long as you get good grades." It's really fun, and nothing more.
Walt had a seat-of-the-pants approach on what he wanted musically. We kind of 'read' the boss and had a very high batting average, but there were occasions when he felt we had just written the wrong piece for the situation he wanted. We invariably listened to what he wanted - he was very descriptive in what he wanted and we could read him. We'd go back to the drawing board and work out what he wanted. He was a great inspiration, but a tough taskmaster.
I think my parents were really smart parents. I think they were, actually, pretty progressive for the time. The one thing that they really wanted me to know is what makes me tick, what I am about, how I approach life. And I think what my parents really wanted for me was for me to be who I am.
I had a high school sweetheart that was my first. We were together all through high school. I had just broken up with him because I didn't think I was good enough. He wanted to be an anesthesiologist. I wanted to be an entertainer. His life was more planned out, and mine wasn't.
When I grew up in the church, we were praying because the Communists were going to come over and hang you upside down on a cross, and I so wanted to be a good person, and I had these rosary beads that I would sleep with every night, and I just wanted the blessed Virgin to be on my side.
I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I wanted to be, it was simply a question of being who I wanted to be.I thought I had had it all figured out before. I'd had the plan perfectly clear in my head. I wasn't going to cross into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends..It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place.I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as living.
I didn't really want to be an actor when I was growing up - I wanted to be whatever I was reading about or seeing at the time. When I read The Firm I wanted to be a lawyer; when I saw Top Gun, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. So that's why acting probably turned out to be a good thing for me because I get to be people for five minutes or 90 minutes. I'd be curious to see if I had the attention span to be like those guys on 30 Rock and play the same character season after season.
I love my parents. Coming out to them was sort of coming out to myself. I educated them, and I wanted our relationship to keep growing. I wanted them to be a part of my life still. I wanted to be able to share with them what I was going through.
I ain't never been in no college with famous people. I was a drifter for a while. I just was desperate to fit in with a group. Really, I was swimming. I was lost, treading water, trying to find my way. I wanted to play football. It didn't work out. I didn't really know what I wanted until I found acting in a theater department, and then everything just fell into place, and I had a passion about something. Then, I started living my life.
I never wanted to be an actor as a kid. I wanted to play hockey, like every other kid in Canada. I had a pretty good shot at it until I was 15 and badly injured myself.
When I decided that I wanted to go to college, I wanted to be a school teacher for 7th and 8th grade boys because I felt that was an important time for them. I had gone astray at that point in my life and really wanted to help keep them from making the same mistake I had made.
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