A Quote by Linda Ronstadt
I just thought that I was going to get to sing for a living and I wouldn't have to go to work in the department store or whatever else you did if you were a woman in those days.
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Back when I was 15 or 16, in Dallas there was a department store called Sanger-Harris. One holiday season, I got a job as a gift wrapper there. The others were all experts who did that job every year, and I was by far the youngest person, who was totally inexperienced. In those days, department stores around Christmastime were a total frenzy.
If I go to the department store, I get no excitement: I can buy the entire department store instead of one bag. So I lost excitement of shopping.
If you were very bright and you became head of a department, as I did, of the psychology department, you were encouraged to go on to graduate work. But as a women you didn't even think about discrimination.
If I'm honest, I thought Westlife would keep going for longer than it did - we all did - but it sort of came to a natural end. When we decided we were going to split, I thought, 'If I'm going to sing, I'm going to have to do it solo.' Also, financially I was broke, so the decision was ultimately made for me.
I think having worked in a department store setting, if my life had not taken a drastically different turn when I became an actor, there's a very high probability I would have continued to work at the department store.
You find your limits by going out and trying. We're just like anybody else in any other job. You just can't work 90 hour weeks. You can't do it. We can't sing seven days a week.
I always thought, I can't waste time, I have to do work. I also thought that I was slower than other people, that I had to concentrate more. I always thought, I'm not brilliant, I have to work. That was something I embedded in myself very early: I have to go home and write. But did I get any more work done than people like Frank O'Hara, who were always going to parties? Probably not.
I always have been an entertainer, whether it's been joking or performing for people. And I always thought I had a talent, because I could rap and I could sing, and I did write. And all the other kids were going to college, but I just felt like I had to do this first, and if it didn't work, then I would go to college.
I thought I'm going to die. So why can't I do everything? And what is this idea that I worked all day yesterday, so I'm tired today? I've never believed that.I thought, "Just suppose I could choreograph a ballet." And I did it. Suppose I could teach dance at the theater in Cleveland. And I did it. Suppose I could sing for a living - that I could stop these two jobs as a waitress and a salesperson.
Figure out what you want, how you want to feel, whatever your motivation is, you have to figure it out. That's step one: where do you want to be? The next thing is just trying to get there and cutting yourself some slack along the way. You're going to have days when you veer off your path, then just get right back on. We all have cheat days, holidays, or celebrations, whatever or period when we can't work out as much as we like, and just do the best you can and when you can get back on track, get back on track.
A lot of people are like, "Oh, it's so much easier to be a supermodel now because you have Instagram. You don't even need an agency anymore." But that's just not true. I still had to go to all the castings, I still had to go meet all the photographers, I still had to do all of that to get to where I am now. There wasn't a step taken out just because I had social media. I still have 12-hour days, I still have even 24-hour days sometimes; I still have to do all those things. We don't work any less hard than the '90s models did when they were young.
When I first started working on movies as a production assistant, we were shooting 65, 75, 85 days. I mean, granted some of those things were "Godzilla," "Deep Impact," and those kinds of things, but these days it's like 30-35 days or 40-45 days and you just feel like you're humping trying to get everything done. It's like "Move on, move on, move on!" That's not the way to get the best performances or the most interesting shots. You have to constantly balance schedule and quality of work. For me, that's the biggest thing.
When I was at college, I worked in a department store called Brit Home Stores, which is a pretty lackluster department store, selling clothes for middle-aged women. My job was to walk the floor and find anything that was damaged, take it to the store room and log it.
When I sing, I go somewhere else. Every time after I sing, I'll ask, 'Did I do OK?' Because I feel like it's like my soul squeezing out of my vocal chords. I don't sit there and think about 'I'm gonna do this next...' I just sing. I sing from my heart, and my heart's got a little lonesome in it.
A year after I started college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. My mother said, forget everything else-if it were your birthday today, what would you do? I thought, I would play with makeup at the department store. So she said, do that!
I want to thank my mom, Brenda Rose. My heart, the reason I play the way I play, just everything. Just knowing the days I don't feel right, going to practice, having a hard time, I think about her when she had to wake me up, go to work and make sure I was all right. Those were hard days.
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