A Quote by Laurie Hernandez

Since kindergarten, I was the shortest kid in class. They always put me toward the front in school pictures, because you couldn't see me if I was in the back. It was kind of funny.
Music education was always big for me. Ever since I was a young kid, I always said it was the reason I went to school sometimes and knowing if I didn't do well in class that my mom wasn't gonna let me sing in school or sing at that concert.
The puberty train came late to the station for me. I was the shortest kid in my sixth-grade class - they made me pose for the yearbook with the tallest kid for comedic contrast.
I've been acting since I was 5 years old, from primary school to secondary school, did training at drama school, which was the big thing for me because they trained me, put me out into the industry.
I've always just felt like an outsider. I've always been made fun of in school ever since kindergarten. For me, when I started singing, that's when I started making "friends,". That's when people started taking an interest in me. That was the thing that made me likable, I guess. Maybe even lovable! I think that's really why I'm so hellbent on doing this as a career is because those are the moments where I felt at my most confident.
If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character.
The school I went to was a little farm school in Wannaska, student body 61 or something. There was a kid, the only black kid in our county, Dustin Byfuglien. He won the Stanley Cup a couple years back with the Blackhawks. Out of a class of 21 kids, he and I always had to be on opposite teams on everything because we were the most athletic.
Growing up, I wanted to be a musician. My mother, in typical Filipino-mom fashion, would always make me go up in front of people at parties to sing. Back then, as a kid, I was mortified. In retrospect, I see that doing that as a child helped me get over my fear of being in front of people.
I was just a goofy little funny kid, who was always getting sent to the principal. It wasn't serious because I was smart. I wasn't like a true troublemaker, just rambunctious - like, talkative and trying to be funny. That was me in middle-school.
I was a pretty hyperactive kid, kind of ADD. I couldn't really stay sitting in my chair, so my kindergarten teacher would have me standing at the back of the room, because I couldn't sit for more than five minutes. My mom needed some positive way to focus my energy and I said I wanted to be an actor, so she was like, "Well, we'll roll with it and see how you respond to it," and I loved it. It was something I could instantly focus my attention to.
I got into trouble a lot in school. They say you're a disturbance in class. You're a distraction, they're moving you around. You never really get rewarded in class for being funny. You're a disturbance. But the funny kid is often witty and clever and quick... they finally get a chance to express themselves when they get out of school.
I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.
It was like, `Do you want a job?’ It didn’t matter what the pitch was. I had to get something because I was doing nothing. It sounded all right to me. I initially read for the role that Colin (Hanks) got. Then they called me back for the role that I ended up getting. … I know it sounds kind of funny. OK, they’re aliens and they’re walking among us and they’re in high school. My good friends are always picking on me about it.
I'm a great candidate for why arts funding shouldn't be cut, because I had no experience other than what was at school, I'm from a working-class town, there were no theaters, and the cinema closed when I was a kid. Anything that gave me a voice or a way to express myself I went running headlong toward.
I took care of my wheel as one would look after a Rolls Royce. If it needed repairs I always brought it to the same shop on Myrtle Avenue run by a negro named Ed Perry. He handled the bike with kid gloves, you might say. He would always see to it that neither front nor back wheel wobbled. Often he would do a job for me without pay, because, as he put it, he never saw a man so in love with his bike as I was.
I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.
I don't have any siblings, but I have best friends that I have known since kindergarten that I'm protective of. If they call me and tell me someone was mean to them at school - I want to go to school and be mean to that person and try to stand up for them.
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