A Quote by Zachary Quinto

I went away to this summer program after my junior year of high school. They used to have this thing called the Governor's School, and they had it for different disciplines - science, math, performing arts. I auditioned and I got accepted, and it was an eight-week program away from home. I went for acting. I was 15, and I turned 16 while I was there, so that was a seminal moment for me. It made me realize the life of it, the discipline of it, and the joy of that discipline, where it was all we did.
In my junior year of high school, I went to a boarding school for the arts: a school called the Governor's School for The Arts and Humanities. It was basically a mini-Juilliard - an intense training conservatory for the arts.
[Larry Laurenzano] gave me a junior high school saxophone to take to high school, because I was always taking one of our school horns home to practice and I couldn't afford to buy one. He gave my friend, Tyrone, a tuba and he gave me a junior high saxophone for each of us to use at Performing Arts High School with. My audition piece was selections from Rocky. We were not sophisticated. But we had some spirit about it. We enjoyed it, and it was a way out.
In about 9th grade, an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school, so I did on a whim. I got accepted. Then I got accepted at the Julliard School, and by then, I was serious about it.
In high school, a teacher once suggested that I be a math major in college. I thought, 'Me? You've got to be joking!' I mean, in junior high, I used to come home and cry because I was so afraid of my math homework. Seriously, I was terrified of math.
When I was 9, I auditioned for an arts school in Toronto with a few of my friends. The sole reason we auditioned was that we found out you got to miss a couple days of school to do the audition. Without actually wanting to go to arts school, I accidentally got in. My parents encouraged me to try it, and I ended falling in love with performing.
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.
I left school my senior year to do a play at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas. Then while I was doing a play, I auditioned for Juilliard. I got in over the summer, and they told me, 'You have to graduate high school to come here. You don't need the SATs, but you do need to graduate high school.' I finished over the summer through correspondence.
I actually met one of my business partners [Neal Dodson] at the Governor's School summer program, so we've known each other since we were 15 and 16 years old, and we both ended up at Carnegie Mellon together. He started working for a producer out of school after a few years, and then we started the company together.
I was, throughout school, in the theater program. Through elementary school, junior high, high school, and then J.J. Abrams, my closest friend in the world, we were living together. He was writing, and I was trying writing; I wasnt getting paid for it like he was, but I always had the acting bug.
When I graduated from high school, I got accepted to York University, Fine Arts film program.
Before I went to Escuela Caribe, my parents showed me the school's brochures featuring smiling kids at the beach or on horseback. The propaganda was greatly appealing to a kid from rural Indiana who hated her high school anyway. I also got reassurances that I could return if I didn't like it. But shortly after the gates closed behind me, I learned I'd been deceived; the beach was far away and I couldn't return home until I'd completed the program.
From elementary school on up through junior high school, I loved to perform. But I put it all away during high school and college. I thought, "That's not actually something you do with your life." But then I was compelled to try it after college. I just got overcome.
I was finishing up at High School of Performing Arts and finally, by the end of junior year and start of senior year, made some progress as a 16 year-old classical saxophone player. But not really... not like how the legit cats do. But I love the [Jacques] Ibert, love [Alexander] Glazunov, love the [Paul] Creston.
There was no theater program or anything where I'm from. So junior year in high school I started the theater program.
Justin [Di Cioccio] was [at Laguardia School of Arts]. He later took over at Manhattan. But I knew Justin through the McDonald's band, which at the time I was finishing high school and starting college, I got involved with. I was not that heavily involved with the school at MSM my first year there. I took a semester off to start my 2nd year. Took classes I felt like taking during my third semester, but by the start of my third year, September of '86, they began the undergraduate jazz program and I joined that program.
In high school, I was selected for NASA's Math & Science program. I'd hop on the yellow school bus and head up to Cape Canaveral.
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