A Quote by Chiwetel Ejiofor
My father, Arinze Ejiofor , was a musician and a doctor. Nobody's ever asked me about that combination and what growing up in that environment was like.
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I have a musician friend who, after reading Mountains, told me, "When I read the book, I wanted to quit music altogether and become a doctor." I told him, "Do you really think you can be a better doctor than you are a musician? Nobody needs you as a lousy doctor. Just be the one-of-a-kind, brilliant musician you are, and divert your success somehow to benefit the poor." You can achieve so much more this way.
Think about all of the families where the father is a doctor and the son is a doctor or generations of coal miners. Why did they go into that line of work? Because that's what they were taught. Or was it in their genes? It's not an either/or question. It's both. I was inclined in that way. I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.
My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense.
Since my father is a musician as well, he taught me growing up that if you can play jazz, you can learn all instruments and write on them. He wanted me to be a songwriter that can do anything in any genre. I'm all about doing every genre.
Well people often ask me how I felt growing up with a father who was a politician and who was often away. But when I'm asked that question I often reflect on my inability really to be able to answer it in any relative sense because I never grew up with a father doing anything else. So I just have no idea what it would be like otherwise.
Like every father who wants his son to be either an engineer or a doctor, my father wanted me to become a doctor. I never did.
If you had asked me growing up what a stylist does or what a magazine editor does, I would have had no clue - how do you research something like that when you are a first-born child of an immigrant who only grew up knowing doctor, engineer, and lawyer as careers?
I had to run away from home in order to be a musician. Because I came from a family of... my father was a health inspector; my mother was a social worker. And I was pretty smart in school. So they expected me to be some kind of academic - schoolteacher, or doctor, lawyer - and they were very disappointed when I told them I wanted to be a musician.
I'm sure as an infant, no matter what I looked like, I felt like the most loved kid getting those massages. So I really think that was a big part of my growing and my brain developing. Most of all however, I think it was the love that was given to me unconditionally and I felt that my whole life. It certainly wasn't that my parents always liked what I was doing, even my becoming a doctor, my father preferred I went into business so he could help me, but I wanted to be a doctor.
Nobody asks me about what male musicians I think about; I only ever get asked about females.
People ask me from time to time what it was like growing up with Henry Fonda as my father. I say, Ever see Fort Apache? He was like Colonel Thursday.
Ain't nobody ever had a jumpshot like mine, ain't nobody ever power moves like mine, ain't nobody ever tough defense like mine and ain't nobody ever had the courage to be a winner like me.
Though I technically come from a film family, my father had stopped making films even before my brother and I were born. So I did not really grow up in a filmi environment. And when I was growing up, becoming an actress was still quite a taboo. And you may not believe this, but even my father did not want me to join films.
Nobody in my life has ever known me the way you do. Nobody in my life has ever made me feel as good as you do. You know me, you know everything about me, and when you leave me, you're going to be leaving the real me, the me nobody else has ever seen, that's who you're going to be rejecting.
My wife asked me if I ever thought I would ever retire from stand-up. And I thought about it, and I was like, 'No, because it's my job; it's what I do, and I enjoy it.' It's still the most challenging thing for me to do.
I truly think comedy is - being funny is DNA. My dad was a doctor, a wonderful doctor, and people still come up to me today, 'Your father helped my mother die.' You know what I'm saying? He made her laugh 'til she died. My father was always very funny.
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