A Quote by Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Growing up, I was a very shy kid but I felt that being on stage or playing another character would somehow open me up. And I think it did. — © Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Growing up, I was a very shy kid but I felt that being on stage or playing another character would somehow open me up. And I think it did.
Me being a shy kid, very closed off, showing vulnerability in a character was sort of a safe space on stage. It's always been in my toolbox, there for me when I need it.
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."
As a child, I felt that the Indian part of me was unacknowledged, and therefore somehow negated, by my American environment and vice versa. Growing up, I was impatient with my parents for being so different, holding on to India the way they did, and always making me feel like I had to make a choice of which way I would go.
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.
I always wanted to be an artist of some sort and I was really shy growing up, so performing didn't really seem like a natural choice, but whenever I got on stage to do something I felt more comfortable than I did in real life.
Kids will pick up on weakness, and I was very shy growing up. I was skinny and flat-chested; I didn't have the latest clothes. For me, it was about being left out and not having any friends and being laughed at. I was very lonely, but that happens to so many people.
I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn't confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.
I remember me being that kid growing up. Me being the kid that grew up going to games and being a ball boy and wanting a high five from Blake Griffin or the other players.
Even when I became the typical shy adolescent, I never minded performing. I felt there was a kind of safety, a protection about being on stage, about losing myself in another character.
Fundamentally, I was a very shy and quiet person growing up, so it was just really difficult getting up on a stage. It was a perverse career choice really.
I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was. I was growing up middle-class in a time when growing up middle-class in America meant there would be jobs for my parents, good schools for me to prepare myself for a career, and, if I worked hard and played by the rules, a chance for me to do anything I wanted.
I was incredibly confident on stage because that's where I loved to be. But offstage, there was no balance. I was a little shy kid that went onstage. And I always said, cocaine was the drug that made me open up. I could talk to people. But then it became the drug that closed me down. So it started out by making me talk to everyone, and then ended up by me isolating myself alone with it; which is the end of the world, really.
I was full of energy, and I had a lot of bottled up rage that would come out in my stage performances. It was therapy sessions for someone who couldn't afford to go to therapy, a way to release my frustration, my inhibition. When I was little, growing up in an abusive household, I felt like I didn't have a voice. Suddenly I was on stage and people were watching me and listening to me, so even if I was singing about something that didn't have to do with abuse, when I was on stage I could express all of the anger, the rage.
I think that growing up very poor in a very wealthy town gave me a sense of being an outsider, and I hated it when I was growing up.
There is a shy side to me that evaporates when I play on stage, and I like that. I think it's another facet of my character, and I need to do that.
I think the idea of being on stage and playing for people, and being able to inject a little bit of joy into their lives is a really exciting concept for me. That's definitely why I make music. It's never been for any kind of materialistic reasons, so that thought of being able to be up on stage, and being able to give something to someone in a moment of need for them - that gets me up in the morning; that really excites me.
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