A Quote by Nico Santos

In high school the very first job I got was I worked as a cashier in Burgerville, which is this fast food place in Oregon. I kind of grew up to be a spoiled little kid so my dad was like, 'You're going to get a job for the summer!' I was this clueless immigrant like, 'May I take your order? Sorry sir, I don't know what I'm doing!'
My very first job was a cashier at Burger King in Tucson, Arizona. And I occasionally worked the drive-thru. I'd go wherever I was needed! My second job was at Dairy Queen. I stayed in the fast food royalty.
My - I grew up in - I grew up in public housing. My dad, for most of my life, worked for the post office, which was a terrific job to get because you couldn't lose your job.
I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I never worked as a journalist for one moment.
You know, I got kids. I got sons, and I try to tell them, 'Look, man, when you in the car and you get pulled over, hands on the steering wheel. 'Yes, sir. No sir.' Your job is to either wind up in jail, so I can come get you, or be able to pull off. That's your job.'
I went to art school for about a year. I was born and raised in the Willamette Valley in Oregon into a middle-class family who didn't have the funds to say, "Here, kid. Here's your money for school." So I worked real hard during the summer and saved money and was able to go to school for a year and borrowed a little money which I paid back after that first year.
It all started in Michigan. My dad got a job in Michigan, so we all moved up there from St. Louis. I kind of hung out in the summer and had nothing to do, so I sort of got into acting. And then I was going to Grand Blanc High, doing the acting thing and hoping it would pan out.
When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing. I was such a - like a kid that got into things before I was ready. I was like the original learning-on-the-job-experience guy. All I knew was, if I hired the best musicians, I got the best arranger, and got the right songs for the right singer, I had did my job correctly.
I don't really know. I think the first test is when you're very little and you fart, and you laugh at it and so do your friends and family. I knew before I was funny I was very annoying so I have that covered. I think it was because I was not very good in school I used humor as a defense mechanism. When I started doing plays and stuff at school I decided that I was going to keep doing it until someone tells me to stop and get a real job.
I grew up in a household that was a labor household. My dad was a Teamster and a milk truck driver. My mother was a secretary. Neither of them got through high school. But they worked hard and they gave me very, very important opportunities to go to school, get a good education.
My dad took me to a high school basketball game and this very, very famous coach in Michigan, by the name of Lofton Greene - he was a guy that my dad was familiar with. He was from our hometown. And I watched the game and I said I didn't see this guy doing a lot of coaching. And my dad told me, well, it's just like a teacher - which he was - he said if you do a good job teaching during the week, when they take the test on Friday, that's not the time you have to do a lot of demonstrative things.
I only worked on that one movie, but then quickly realized that the path of being an assistant director was not gonna get me to producing. It's a different path coming up through production management and then line producing. So I basically was in the position where I was going to take any job that felt creative, like the one I got, which was reading scripts and writing coverage. So even though I was taking a job where I was making less money than the job immediately prior, it seemed like the right thing for me.
I think I was on this very straightforward escalator - grammar school, high school, college, get a job on Wall Street, kind of everything leads to the next thing. But at what point do you get to step back and say, 'I'd like to take a broader view of my time on this planet?'
That's my father's theme. Get up in the morning, 'hello, Dad.' 'Get a job, leave the food alone... Who took my car?' America, you young kids, get a job. All that sagging, the clothes hanging behind, that ain't nothing. Get a job. You want to be somebody, get a job.
In a lot of ways being actor is like with any job, at first it's sort of like alien to you a little bit... a little foreign. And then as time goes on... when I was a kid I'd take a role... it's kind of funny too, because now I have the attitude also "All I am is just like making movies." When you're a kid it's like, "Oh my god, I'm making a movie! It's so much pressure!".
I got extreme street credibility from my high school-aged son. He's like, 'Dad, the fact that you're in 'American Horror Story' is absolutely cool!' I was like, 'Okay, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate for you.' And he was like, 'Dad, come on! I'm a New York City kid - in high school.'
My high school didn't have a football team; we just had like a surf team, because I grew up in Encinitas, California, which is the ultimate place where everyone skated or surfed, so it was a very different culture. It was, like, cool to be the art kid.
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