A Quote by Christian McKay
Originally I studied as a musician, a classical pianist. That was my career before I took up acting in my late 20s.
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So when my film career took off, I always felt like I was trying to play catch-up because I hadn't studied acting before. I didn't know how to manage money or my career. When I look back, I think I was a little bit shell-shocked.
In fact although I have studied in a Conservatory the classical piano, I do not consider myself a classical pianist.
Mum was a brilliant classical pianist. She was Canadian and studied music at McGill University. She took me to ballet when I was a little girl, and those are some of my happiest memories.
My grandmother was a classical pianist, so I grew up with Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven. I studied piano as a kid. My musical background and upbringing was very much a mix.
Being a classical musician, you can go to school for it; you can go get a degree. Even as a composer, there is a certain career path you can follow, but becoming a rock musician is a much more elusive career. How do you learn that or do that?
When I moved to L.A., I had no intention of really pursuing acting. I wanted to focus on stand-up. It's crazy to me that my acting career took off much faster than my stand-up career.
I don't really have a career as a jazz musician. I don't really have a career as a classical musician. I don't really have a career as a college professor, and yet I did all those things and I did them well. I put out some records in the 1980's and 1990's that changed the way some trumpet players played.
I studied voiceover, and I studied acting and I got my first series and my first agent a week out of high school. And it took me about five years of hit-or-miss auditioning and booking on occasion before I could support myself totally as an actor.
I think for a classical musician the goal is the same as an electronic musician. A very good professional classical musician must not think about technique.
My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine since I was 17 maybe.
When I was young, I played the piano and studied classical music and jazz. I wanted to be a concert pianist, and if I'd devoted myself to it, I could have been. But it would have been too much work and a very lonely life.
Yeah I grew up in the public eye. I became a man in the public eye, which is kind of a bizarre thing to come to terms with. Now I'm in my late 20s and I was in my early 20s when I became recognizable. But I think 'Moneyball' represents a very strong shift in my career and becoming an adult and a man.
I wanted to be a jazz pianist, but I wasn't good enough. I got into city college because I didn't have the grades to get into university. I took acting because it was a way to get three credits. I just needed three credits and my friend told me to take acting because it was like gym - nobody fails you. I took it and that's literally how I got involved in acting.
Of course, in later years, I'd studied acting more than ever before - mostly with the late Stella Adler, who was marvelous! - but in my earlier years, I couldn't afford to do this.
Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.
When I do operas, I'm not really singing very classically. I have a classical background as far as being a pianist and an oboist, but my voice isn't really classical in the operatic sense. But I certainly have a classical sensibility, so I'm comfortable being in that world.
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