A Quote by John Goodman

I ain't never been in no college with famous people. I was a drifter for a while. I just was desperate to fit in with a group. Really, I was swimming. I was lost, treading water, trying to find my way. I wanted to play football. It didn't work out. I didn't really know what I wanted until I found acting in a theater department, and then everything just fell into place, and I had a passion about something. Then, I started living my life.
I've been working in theater, really, since about 1965. I started working with the Mabou Mines about then, and in a way I've always worked in the theater, but it's never been a main part of my work. And it wasn't until Einstein that I kind of shifted into high gear with theater, working with Bob, with Bob Wilson. And since then I find it a very attractive form to work in. It's just an extension of my work.
Dance was something I'd just done at my youth club, and I used to teach dance when I was 14 to 19, 20 years old. I had my own dance group, and then I got more into the acting stuff, and I started doing things for TV. And then I put that on pause, because I really wanted to focus on my real passion, which is music.
I was always drawn to performing, but I never thought I could. I have no idea what I wanted to do outside of the old cowboy-or-fireman. When I was in college, I got serious about acting. I started examining history and then everything related to the theater. History, art, all the other studies, if I could link them into the theater, then it became alive for me. It just opened up my eyes.
For a long time, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was desperate to find something that fit me and I just decided that if I could organically make a professional living out of the things that interested me, then I would be a happy person.
I was interning at a children's theater group in Kentucky - that was my first job out of college. I had jumped around a couple of regional theaters, and I was about to go back to Maine to work at a summer Shakespeare theater there. I didn't want to just jump around the country from gig to gig. I really wanted to go to a city and get involved in a theater scene and a theater community.
When I put something into motion, the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed. I'm just like a shark, in that way. If I stop swimming, I'll die. But, it really is about that shared experience with people. I'm from theater, and that's really what theater feels like.
I think I was just so ecstatic that I was working, and then as it went on, you know, I started to really appreciate that it ["Freaks and Geeks"] was good and that we were doing something a little different and that, you know, everyone was really cool to work with and that it was really talented group of people, and it was just when I was realizing that, that it got canceled.
It's weird, I was such a survivor and so wanted to be a part of life while I was trying to snuff out the life that was inside of me. I had this duality of trying to kill myself with drugs, then eating really good food and exercising and going swimming and trying to be a part of life. I was always going back and forth on some level.
My father is an actor, so he brought me into his agency when I was young. It wasn't something I wanted to do until high school, when I started taking theater and really liked it. Then an agent found me and wanted me to come out to Los Angeles and give it a shot. I gave myself six months, but it only took me like a week to get a job.
I was never on a mission to be an NFL quarterback. I wanted to be a good high school player, and I worked hard at that. That made me good enough to play in college and then I wanted to be a good college quarterback. During college I played well enough to make it into the NFL. I never took it for granted and really wanted to play hard at each level and I have always had a lot of fun doing what I wanted to do.
I was in college, and I studied everything, but was really not good at anything until I found philosophy, and, then, political science. I thought, 'Wow, this is something I really enjoy.' I kind of got into that whole world of law and political science. I was really into it and enjoying it, and then I took an acting elective, and that was it.
Yes it did really. It was very exciting to find that my energy could be directed into something more useful and positive. I was starting to get panicked. I was thinking 'what am I going to do with my life?' I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Then I became crazily obsessed with acting. I suddenly had a work ethic and then everything changed completely for the better because I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.
After I had my daughter, I kind of got comfortable with motherhood and had time to focus on something else then I started "Sailing Souls" with Fisticuffs, who produced the majority of the mixtape. I just wanted to put out something, like it wasnt really for, you know exposure or to get a deal or really anything like that.
My way into everything was through the theater. There are so many plays that I saw growing up that just made me realize that I wanted to be on stage doing that. So it was definitely through ballet, and then stage, and then theater and acting. And then I kind of made my way to film.
It's not that acting was something I'd always wanted to do. I had no formal training; I'd never really imagined I'd be an actress. Business was something that had always been in my mind, but when I got into acting, I learned everything on set, and for me at that point, I wanted to excel at what I did.
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