A Quote by Nina Arianda

I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back. — © Nina Arianda
I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back.
When I was a kid, my daily routine was playing make-believe, and I kind of created these stories throughout the day. And when it came time to go to preschool, my English wasn't really so great because my mother wanted me to learn Ukrainian, so she signed me up for these children's theater groups.
What's funny is my mom took me to the theater for the first time when I was six years old, and I was just amazed by it. I just said, 'Hey Mom, can I do this too?' And so she signed me up for little theater classes, and I remember my first audition for a play when I was seven years old was for 'The Thankful Elf.'
My mom says that she caught me one day in front of the TV watching opera. I was trying to sing back the opera. She saw that I really liked music, and so she put me in piano lessons when I was about three years old.
When I was really young, my mom enrolled me in dance classes. "Mom, I'm too young to dance," I told her. She kind of forced me, but I ended up loving it, and after the ?rst lesson I came back and said, "Come on, Mom, I'll show you the box step." That introduced me not just to dancing but also to working with someone without having a goal.
I've been performing my whole life. My mom signed me up for a theater program when I was five - I was the evil queen in 'Once Upon a Mattress.'
I was a creative kid; I wasn't really into sports, and sports in the South are a pretty big deal. It's like a religion down there. It was tough to find my footing, but thankfully, my parents discovered, through a neighbor, this theater called Young Actors Theater and signed me up for the summer program. It really was a gift. Even if a kid doesn't go into acting or the arts like I did, some kids need that environment to find themselves and find what they love to do. I'm so thankful for that theater; it was a big gift to me.
I was 6, and I was in the opera 'Carmen.' My dad sang opera and got me into the children's chorus. I was super fat at the time and didn't make eye contact with anyone. I knew I loved acting ever since.
I've never had a particular skill. I can't cook, dance, play an instrument, speak a foreign language. This used to worry me. I'd think, when I'm grown up, at 18, then I made it 21, it will be clear what role I should have in life. It never happened. I never signed on the dotted line as the sort of adult my father wanted.
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 transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like, chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it.
My mom was a dance teacher, so she put me in dance school when I was a kid. I did everything. I used to take ballet.
I love 'Threepenny Opera'; I was exposed to it as a little kid because my parents, my mom and my dad, had bonded, when they were dating, over 'Threepenny Opera' and introduced it to me, a child, who could barely understand it. But I immediately gravitated even from that early age.
I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.
My mom and dad used to call me 'full drama'. Mom had many videos of me as a kid where I was doing some dance moves, and suddenly the next moment, I was on the floor.
In terms of theater, I would love to go back to do theater. If I could find something for me to do that fits in with the 'Psych' off-season, I'm game. I would like to do theater where I get to act and dance.
If I had the money, I would love to open up a movie theater that just played images and colors and beautiful music. For me, there's nothing like listening to a beautiful opera sometimes - on a record or seeing it live - just to be sleepy and let those beautiful voices take me somewhere I've never been before.
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