A Quote by Ian McShane
If I'd had the choice when I was 14, and someone had said to me, 'You can either be a footballer or an actor,' I'd have said: 'Well, can't I be a footballing actor?'
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I had said bye-bye to acting, in a way, but once an actor, always an actor. Life has got other plans for me. Like, I did not want to be an actor - I wanted to be an architect or astronaut - and 'Daddy' happened, and the rest is history.
I'm a working class lad. So at 25, and with no-one in our family having any theatrical inclination, when I said, 'I'm going to scratch all that and become an actor,' I may as well have said I was going to be a Premiership footballer for the chance I'd have.
An actor had made a comment and said, 'You are so unapproachable.' He called me boring and said, 'You're no fun.' He also said, 'I don't know if I ever want to work with you again.' And I never worked with him after that film.
If you had asked me back in grade school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said my first choice was an actor, but if I couldn't be that, I'd want to be a superhero.
My mother and father raised their eyebrows at first when I said I wanted to be an actor because I was in this industrial city. My dad had done a bit of boxing on the side, but he was a welder first and foremost. I was 17, and I said, 'I want to be an actor.' They worried it was a waste of time.
Danny DeVito knows about the business from many different perspectives, because he is a producer and director as well as an actor. At one point we were on the set late at night and he said: 'come here I want to brush your hair'. I said 'ok'. He sat there brushing my hair and told me that his job before becoming an actor was as a hair stylist in Manhattan. I said "what?" But it is true.
I come from Nova Scotia, and I'd never seen a theater or been inside of a theater. When I was 17, my dad asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I thought I would like to be an actor. I didn't have any idea what it was to be an actor. None. I'd wanted to be either an actor or a sculptor, which are both essentially the same thing. That's how it all started for me.
Identity is a very difficult thing in the theatre. As an actor said to me one day, 'What are we doing today?' when we were doing a workshop. And I said, 'Oh, just be yourself'. And he said to me, 'I don't know who that is, I'm an actor'. And I begin to realise in fact that we seek identity because we're told we should have one, but I wonder whether it's necessary.
I had to learn how to become a real actor, I had to suffer and be rejected and face that 100 times just like every actor. It wasn't like someone handed it to me
I had to learn how to become a real actor, I had to suffer and be rejected and face that 100 times just like every actor. It wasn't like someone handed it to me.
Well, an actor is an actor is actor, to paraphrase someone or other and the opportunity to work, to have a steady engagement, certainly seemed like an appealing concept to me.
I decided to become an actor at five. I saw the most gorgeous woman that I had ever seen in my five years of living on television. She had on a long, red dress and her eyelashes looked like butterflies and I said, "Grandmamma, who is that?" She said, "Baby, that's Lola Falana." I said, "That's it right there. I want to be black, fabulous, and on TV."
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.
'Shaadi... ' made people see me as an actor. A lot of filmmakers called and said I was really good in the film... People from the industry - who never spoke to me, didn't think I was a great actor because they hadn't seen my work - said I can act.
I went to a masterclass with Jonathan Pryce who said that a successful actor is not a famous actor, it's an actor who acts. And I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked constantly from the moment I left drama school, so I achieved what I set out to do. I am an actor.
After my father had seen me in five or six things, he said, Son, your mother and I really enjoyed your recent film, and I must say that you're a lot like John Wayne. And I said, How so? And he said, Well, you're exactly the same in all your roles. Now, as a modern American actor, that's not what you want to hear. But for a guy who watched John Wayne movies and grew up in Iowa, it's a sterling compliment.
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