A Quote by Michael Graziadei
In college I took an acting class as a joke. It sounded like something fun and easy at the time. I had originally wanted to go to art school, but I gave all that up because I didn't want to be a starving artist.
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After the Dance was my first attempt at nonfiction. I'd never really participated in carnival, and I really wanted to go. It sounded like a wonderfully fun thing to do. And I wanted to write something happy about Haiti, something celebratory. And going to carnival gave me a chance to do that, because it is one of the instances in Haiti when people shed their class separation and come together.
I only took a high school acting class because there was no other class I wanted to take. I loved it, but I was always against acting as a profession. I didn't like the monetary fluctuations I saw.
I knew I wanted to go to college and I wanted to study it acting, so I just looked for the best school that I could get into. Luckily, I had very supportive parents. I went to a conservatory that is basically drama school. You take one English class and one history class for four years but you don't take any other science or anything like that. It's strictly, from 7am until night, all acting. It's a lot. Some people find it too much, but for me I was preparing for a career and I never really looked back.
I went to school to play sports, but I got involved in theatre in college kind of by mistake. I ended up taking an acting class almost just to get rid of an arts requirement, but I wound up in this wonderful acting class with this teacher named Alma Becker who really saved my life. I was just kind of this knucklehead kid from DC and I was in and out of trouble all of the time. I took a theatre class and she really discovered something in me and I absolutely fell in love with it.
I became an art major, took every art class my school had to offer. In college, I majored in Advertising Art and Design.
When I went to college, I went to a junior college. I wanted to go to the University of Alabama but had to go to junior college first to get my GPA up. I did a half-year of junior college, then dropped out and had my daughter. College was always an opportunity to go back. But she, my daughter, was my support. I gave up everything for her.
Acting was something I did growing up. I never it took it too seriously; it was just one of those things I got into high school and was like, 'Nah, I don't want to continue acting.' Cause I got into it professionally by local theater, and from there, I just decided to do sports and be more a high school kid and have my fun.
I wanted to be an animator originally. I went to art school; I went to art college and everything. But that screen was just calling me.
I didn't want to go to school, because I wanted to be an artist, and they were never going to teach me art. None of my family had ever done that kind of stuff either.
I was in school, but I wasn't into school. I wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing in school, which was film studies. That was what I intended on doing, but I didn't go away to a university because I wanted to stay in L.A. and audition while I took classes, so I elected to go to a community college and just take G.E. courses. It was terrible.
I heard "romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator in Victorian England," and I was like, "You have got to be kidding me. Yes, I want to do that." And I had a bunch of small kids, and I didn't want something that was so impossibly difficult, a "broccoli movie." But I wanted something that meant something to me, so I just kind of said, "Let's go, jump in!" It took a long time to get Hysteria made, but it was really fun.
About a year after I moved to Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to be a joke writer for a late night talk show. So I met with a late night joke writer and he told me that I should start by doing stand-up comedy, because that would really hone my sense of humor and joke writing ability. Eventually I took a stand-up class and a few months later I had a seven-minute act.
Acting was always something fun to do on the side growing up, but I never really took it seriously. I would do a commercial every few months, and that paid my school tuition. But in high school, I was mostly into sports and didn't go out for stuff during those seasons.
I didn't act in college, per se, because I didn't want an acting degree. I don't know what you do with that degree. When I was 16, I saw 'Usual Suspects,' and I wanted to be a director as well. So I thought I should go to school for directing and producing, something I knew nothing about.
I never gave up. I never quit. I've been a leader all my life, from elementary school to president of my class to excelling at college. I had a dream, and my dream sustained me. I wasn't going to let anything stand in my way. I was like a meteorite. I wanted to become a star. It's been quite a journey.
I wanted to be a jazz pianist, but I wasn't good enough. I got into city college because I didn't have the grades to get into university. I took acting because it was a way to get three credits. I just needed three credits and my friend told me to take acting because it was like gym - nobody fails you. I took it and that's literally how I got involved in acting.
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