A Quote by John David Washington
The injury that ended my time in football turned out to be serendipitous. I tore my Achilles while training for a pending tryout with the New York Giants, and when it snapped, so did my career, basically. That's what led me to gain the confidence to get into the acting world on my own terms.
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The acting training in school was great, but it was mostly fun being young and in New York. Because my upbringing was so transient, New York ended up being my home. I've been living in New York longer than I have anywhere else in my life.
Basically, the prosecutor who led case against me and that administration were trying to say that an actor can be held responsible for his acting, thousands of miles away from where he did the acting. The analogy would be if an artist painted a nude painting in New York City, and it was met with accolades and great reviews. And suddenly, somebody from Texas bought it and put it in their shoe store and it was found to be obscene in Texas, the artist in New York is responsible, and goes to jail because it's obscene in Texas.
I've worked really hard to build up a career on my own. I turned 30 recently and it took me a long time to get the chance to make a feature film and do it on my own terms.
I don't regret giving up football for acting. I love football and am very proud I played for Morton. But the truth is, I wasn't going to get much higher in football. At the same time, I sensed I could go somewhere in acting. I'm 28, which is young for acting, whereas in football I'd now be near the end of my career.
'All In' is like the Giants motto, so I kind of took that, and I kind of used New York as the backdrop - how diehard New Yorkers are for their team. Me being a New Yorker, I just had to show my love for the city as well as my love for the New York Giants.
And then, one acting class turned into two, turned into four, and then turned into, "I love this. I could do this for the rest of my life. But, I don't have a background in acting. I never acted in college, or did anything like that. How can I go about doing this?" That meant going to grad school and getting some training, and I did. I literally walked down the path. It was real fortuitous for me to walk by that school, that one morning.
I turned down a contract with a major network in New York my senior year of college in order to move to Los Angeles and pursue my acting career. But so far it's working out.
My knee was torn up. I tore every ligament in my knee. It was a very, very bad injury. I had to do what the doctors told me to do, and I did that. The next year, I came back and led the league in rushing.
I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective.
It took a while to find a passion for another career that was as strong as the passion that I had for football. Once I found it in acting, it was simple. Use the tools you were given from playing football and apply it to your new passion. I have done that through acting, producing and writing.
New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.... Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant--one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.
I feel like more than 80% of the world wouldn't get up in front of 40 million people and dance on national television, and if I have the confidence to do that then that's a step ahead in my life for me in terms of personal goals. I will gain a lot of confidence on all aspects right there.
I came over here with $100; it was 1983 and I just ended up staying. New York at that time was very inexpensive and it was very easy to get a job. We lived on Staten Island and you could get cheap rent. It was a good time to be in New York.
I went to school in New York and grew up in and out of New York. I love it, and I miss it, and every time I go back, I think, 'Why am I in Germany?' I do know that my career is really important to me, and in Germany, they've always been so much more supportive than my previous engagements in the dance world.
I tore my abdomen. That ended my football career, which was what I wanted to do my entire life, and when that was over, I pretty much looked to just about anything, but nothing really caught my interest.
And I actually had to beg for my last tryout at NXT. Yeah, I actually had to send multiple emails to say, 'I want another tryout and there's no reason you will not hire me after this tryout.' And that was the tryout that they hired me from.
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