A Quote by Dylan O'Brien

I didn't grow up acting. I really just started, literally, when I was 18. I just feel like it's a thing of always just experiencing it and growing, as a person. — © Dylan O'Brien
I didn't grow up acting. I really just started, literally, when I was 18. I just feel like it's a thing of always just experiencing it and growing, as a person.
There was a little part of me that always felt like I was going to be an actress, but I never acted when I was growing up. I was a dancer. That's all I did, all day, all my life. Maybe this was just where I was meant to be, and somehow I ended up here, but it just felt right. As soon as I started acting, it just felt like it was meant to be.
The drinking was getting way out of control. I just didn't recognize myself anymore. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was. I always had to have some drinks with me in my bag. Just waking up shaking and then having Bloody Marys on your own, first thing in the morning-I started to feel really pathetic about it. So I was like, "I can't live like this." It was just this really awful feeling of becoming a totally different person and not being able to control it at all. Then I tried to not drink, but that didn't work. So I figured I should just go to rehab.
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.
Just understanding that if you're not growing up, you're just moving backwards, and I'm a person that I always want to grow and learn and not be the smartest person in the room, because when you're not the smartest person in the room, you're always learning things.
I came out to Hollywood when I was just 18, and my dad, he was really into Hollywood and theater and art, and I guess growing up, he exposed me to a lot of culture, and I just started making Super-8 films in high school and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.
I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up and stuff, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. So for me, it's always comedy, and then acting is just one medium of comedy.
I never want to feel complacent, and I had started to, a little bit. I had started to feel like "I have this thing I can do, it's worked a few times," but not only does that get boring, but you feel stagnant and unproductive. So I was feeling a lack of creativity and motivation, so I started making a more conscious choice to grow personally. It wasn't even an image-conscious thing, like, "I don't want people to think this way about me." It was really just a way to keep myself energized and feel excited about this thing I love doing. Like I went to couples therapy or something.
I get burned out on standup. But I like acting. I do like it. But sometimes you just feel like a monkey. You just feel like a complete tool. But I like it. I do like it. Stand-up is just more free. A lot more freedom because you just do what you want to do.
I get better at playing the guitar and piano, every time we do a record because we practice more and the years go by and it's just what happens. It is just growing up, and it's cool how over the years the fans grow up and we grow up, and it just kind of works together.
I just think that the gifts that God has given me and the attention that I have, I just don't feel like acting is the limit of it. I just feel like there's so much more that I could do...And, you know, every day I wake up and I try to do a little more and I just want the world to be different and better because I was here.
In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn't realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn't think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting - that it's a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, 'Hey, I'm going to be a NASCAR driver.'
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."
When I was on the 'Knock Madness' tour, I was just thinking about life; I started questioning God. I was praying a lot. I was just really emotional. I was going through a break up situation as well. And I just felt like I needed to be home. I was over the rap thing. I just felt like I wasn't getting the respect and credit that I deserve.
I always grew up around acting. I did commercials as a kid and all that kind of stuff and my oldest brother did theatre in High School. It's funny, when I was 15 I had a friend of mine who dragged me away to a camp at Boston University. It was the first time truthfully that acting didn't feel presentational; it felt very personal. I didn't just feel like I was singing and dancing for my friends in High School. It felt like I was doing a scene and all of a sudden I started to feeling something - I started to feel emotional.
I literally make music for my wife and my friends. I don't feel beholden to my fans. I don't even really know who they are. But, I know that this whole thing started with me making stuff that I got off on, and I've gotta believe that that's how it's going to end, too. That's the only way it can go. There are a lot of artists who have gotten pretty caught up in that. That's why I like the defeatist attitude. Just assume that no one is going to like it and that no one cares, and you'll end up making something that you really like.
My mom, my father, my little sisters, and my brother - I don't got that much family. I'm not really a family person. I just do my own thing. But I've just been spending time with my mom, especially since the [September motorcycle] accident happened. I drive all the way down there to Georgia just to check up on her. You just get tired of being that person that you thought you were. I don't feel no different. I see the music, because I made it. I don't really see the fame.
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