Wyatt Russell Quotes

Before Hollywood happened to me, I just took a break to think about whether I belong in the industry or whether I should be listening to whatever people were telling me.

I have a tattoo on my arm that says, 'The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.'

I didn't think I was an actor and fought it for a long time. Nobody paid for that but me.

I told everyone that acting's for losers and I needed to get an education. But something kept telling me to give it one last chance. In the end, I lasted a month on the M.B.A. and then decided to quit, come back to L.A., and try again.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

It's important to me to try and expose young people to the things they believe are off-limits to them. I tell them, 'There are no walls, only the ones we put up.' My advice to young people looking at my life is not to follow my footprint but to go out there and make their own.

I think when your parents are as rebellious as mine were, it's difficult to top them. So what's the point?

The hardest part when I decided to move into acting was trusting I'd made the right decision.

You've got to make sure every decision you make is right for you as a person. If you think you can go to a better club than the one you're at, then, regardless of what anyone says, you should go.

When someone says you can't do what you know you can do, then you can't do anything.

I was always much more shy. All I knew was that I loved to act. But I don't know about the other part of it. I'm not sure I had the chutzpah to go and prove yourself.

There were times when I wondered if I was doing the right thing, studying when I could have been going to auditions.

I think it is vital to fight to do something you want to do despite not gaining your community's or your friends' approval.

With the first album, I wanted to do so many different things, and I was fighting with myself to try and see if I was worthy enough to do it.

Nobody really thought I was going to make it, because I was a musician. I really wasn't a singer.

I've learned that life is very tricky business: Each person needs to find what they want to do in life and not be dissuaded when people question them.

Where I came from, the idea of going into show business was just ridiculous; in fact I didn't tell anybody because I knew people would laugh at me. So I sort of snuck around and got some pictures and got a resume together and, of course, lied and said I did all kinds of things I didn't do.

What I would say to young entrepreneurs is there's so many moments in your life where you have these dreams, and people are trying to protect you, and they say, perhaps, friends, family, parents sometimes, they don't agree with it, they think, 'This is just too high of a hurdle.' And I don't agree with that.

I was always told that music isn't a 'realistic' path to take, and like a normal human being, I doubted myself over and over because I was afraid of failure.

Whatever you hold onto that you want to do, and that other people tell you you are foolish to want to do - don't give up.

I try not to think too much about what the audience is thinking and what they think I should do.

If I were to listen to people all the time when they say, 'Hey, this is a really high challenge, this is a high climb, the bar is pretty steep,' then I wouldn't have gone to the academy. I wouldn't have become an aircraft carrier pilot. I wouldn't have become a Navy SEAL for sure. And I probably wouldn't have applied to Harvard.

I haven't accepted anyone telling me what is or isn't possible and have just kept moving along toward my goals.

From Italy, I'd get calls from cousins and aunts saying, 'I don't think you should act. It's really tough. What are the chances?' This was around the time 'Flashdance' came out, and I was like, 'What about your dreams? I'm a maniac.'

As far as everyone else's opinion, I mean, if I would have thought that everyone was right, I probably wouldn't have left Compton, so I don't get too caught up on what the next person thinks.