A Quote by Jason Priestley

Well, I've been a professional racer for nine years. And if I could get it to pay me as much as acting, I'd give up all the rest in a second. Working in television, however, has made me accustomed to a certain lifestyle that I'd like to maintain.
It never occurred to me that I was a leading man until I was 19 years old. I had been acting since I was 10, so that's nine years and 30 or 40 plays, in school and summer stock, professional theater, too.
Acting like an adult and being professional on set and getting my work done has just been a lifestyle for me. It's not something I have to try hard to do, necessarily.
At this point, a lot of people have made their mind up about me one way or another. I'm sure there's a certain segment of writers who won't ever give me the time of day, hate me, don't get me, don't think I'm good, or whatever. I guess that's fine. It's only an opinion. There are other people who do get it, and can be objective. I could be wrong, but a lot of people, except for really young people, have made up their minds one way or the other.
I have my own dance and production companies, and acting is my creative outlet. It's what I'm passionate about. I've actually created a lifestyle where I could act for free. I could get a job to pay the bills and act on the weekends to make me smile.
Master's degree in journalism served several purposes. It helped me to break down and understand scripts. And the discipline of getting my master's gave me a certain amount of confidence. I don't think college is the only path, but I enjoyed it and it worked out very well for me. I had some good friends with whom I could get a little crazy, but still be responsible. It was the perfect bridge from living at home to independence. I also love learning. I might have been a professional student and earned a couple of doctorates, if I didn't have to pay bills.
Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire musical life. Every mix tape I ever made had at least one Hip song on it. Right from the outset I feel like Gord Downie built so much room into his songs. There was so much space in them that he created. He made me think of songwriting as full of boundless possibilities in a way that - well, that a lot of songwriters do, but that was the first time I thought a song could really contain multitudes.
I have been working since I was 20, and I'm 38. I actually once averaged out what I had made over my professional life. I think I could have made that much as a waiter or an insurance salesman. You know, I spent so many years in my 20's making $10,000 a year.
Well I was eight years old, and I have an older cousin who is three years older than me and she was doing acting, commercials, and modeling at the time and... to see my cousin doing that was really inspiring and I wanted to do it. So I went to my mom and I asked her if I could do it, and for the acting part of it, she made me study for a year.
We don't have the right to tell less fortunate disadvantaged people that they can't come to the USA and get what we have. You see, that's all predicated on the fact that what we have is simply luck and it isn't fair that the rest of the world doesn't have it. The rest of the world could have it. Human civilization has been around however many number of years you want to add up.
I've learned more from makeup artists in my nine years of modeling than from my mother. She always told me not to wear any makeup. I try to keep my skin and hair clean and give them a rest when I'm not working.
I also know that I have represented for us a certain kind of journalist and for me over the years when an older Black person comes and tells me how proud they are of me and the way I represent us on television, or when a younger person says to me, 'Hey Mr. Gordon, I watched you growing up and my parents made me watch you,'.
I wasn't working much. So I focused on studying, and I really learned what it means to be an actor. And here I was on Jonny Quest,working with all these great people from back in the golden age of Hollywood, who came up doing radio. These were journeymen, working actors. It made me proud, and gave me some insight into what acting was really about if you weren't a star.
Now, all writing - all the arts - are a form of 'Pay attention to me,' but there's also the flip side. Like, I want to give something. Let me entertain you, let me amuse you, let me try to please you with this thing I've made. And then pay attention to me.
I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films.
I enjoy working out. That is important for me. Whether it's a hike with my dog or an hour at the gym, I like to maintain an active lifestyle.
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