A Quote by Eliza Dushku

After I graduated high school and came out to do 'Buffy,' I was enrolled at my mom's university, and I was going to go get a real job. I never thought of acting and never really wanted to be an actor.
When I graduated from high school, my mom and dad were saying I needed to go to college, but I said I wanted to pursue my dream of acting. At the end of my high school career, they quit their jobs, and we moved out to California on a leap of faith.
I was in the journalism program in college and had some internships in print journalism during the summers. The plan was to go to Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to learn broadcasting after I graduated. I was enrolled and everything, but ultimately decided that I could never afford to pay back the loan I'd have to take out.
I wouldn't be an actor if it weren't for the English teacher I had my junior year in high school. She's the one who told me I could be an actor. I had never met an actor, I had never seen a real play, only high school plays. I didn't know actors were real, that it was a real job.
I never wrote. I also never really thought about being an actor. But when it was time to go to high school, we couldn't afford private school, so I tried out for all the special schools in New York.
I didn't have drama in high school. So when I graduated high school and started at Wayne State in Detroit, I told my parents I was going to major in theater. And they were like, 'OK. Why? You've never done it.' But, it was just what I wanted, and they came to see my very first show and, from then, completely supported me.
I think my parents wanted me to do something very normal, have a normal person job and not be confronted by the instability of an artistic pursuit, but there wasn't really a lot they could do to stop me. I was, at one point, going to go to law school when I finished high school, but the next day I got accepted into acting school and there was no real question in my mind of what I was going to do.
I always knew when I graduated from high school I’d go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from . . . I just wanted to study literature and writing.
I always knew when I graduated from high school, I'd go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from... I just wanted to study literature and writing.
I never really thought that I was going to get out of coaching ever. In my fifth year, I thought I might get out. You have those thoughts in any job. But I never really, really thought I was going to get out.
After high school, I enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but I stayed only a year and a half. I felt college was a waste of time; I wanted to start working.
I came back and decided that I wanted to go to college for acting and got my family on board. My mom, who was a single mom, was a little reticent, but I think after that summer [in the Governor's School], she saw a shift in me and realized that it was something I wanted more than just a hobby.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that. I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.
My mom graduated from the University of Michigan, which is a great school. Then she got her Master's from NYU. She wanted to be an actress, so when she graduated, she had a dream, and she started following it. She moved to New York and took acting classes with people like Denzel Washington.
I used to skip out of high school and go flying. It was just one of those things, I thought it was kind of a cool thing to do. I never thought about doing that as a profession, but I started checking things out and I found out there was a flight school down in Daytona Beach, called Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
My dad was a lovely guy. I had great parents. But he was a conservative shopkeeper, and he said, "Look, I don't know how to help you as an actor, but if you want to be an actor, give it a go for a year. Get a job. And if you don't get a job, then we're going to reevaluate and you're going to go back to school." And I thought that was a fair thing.
I really feel like I came out of the water when I graduated from college, because I wasn't really aware of what was going on. If certain people tried to take advantage of me or whatever, I never really realized it until I got out of school.
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