Julia Sawalha Quotes

I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back.

By the time I went to Yale, I'd been acting for a long time and I was really tired of it. I was restless - and a little bored - and I was really eager to investigate different parts of myself.

By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.

After 'Arrested Development,' I didn't know for sure if I wanted to be an actor. I was hitting this wall, where I was the 'ethnic best friend' or the 'sassy teenager.' It felt like the same note, and I didn't feel like I was growing.

I kind of had a quarter-life crisis before I did 'Rent.' I had done Glinda in 'Wicked' for a while. I had worked for Cirque Du Soleil, and then I did 'Hair.' Then I had a real quiet time, not having work, and it was a time of not only self-discovery of me as a person, but also what I wanted as an artist and actor.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

I think midlife crisis is just a point where people's careers have reached some plateau and they have to reflect on their personal relationships.

I was in college that first semester, and I was like, 'Wow, this isn't who I am. This isn't what I want to do.' I was like, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to go out and make something of myself, and I have no clue what that is.'

I feel like all I've done lately is play really sexually-charged drug addicts. I don't know what's wrong with me. I've gotta go to Disneyland more and get more excitement.

Prior to my father's death, I was having a hard time committing to a career as an artist, but that's not because of who he was - it was because of who I am. It's true, though, that I felt I shouldn't compete with him, and that those feelings went away after he died.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

It's nice to be in a creative world that's kind of isolated, but you can get led astray down some pathway while you're recording that you might not like later. And there's a lot of time to get in your own head and stay there.

I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.

Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.

I can't cut off an ear everyday. Do the Van Gogh here and the Mozart there. Anyway it's exhausting enough always having to check up on what one is really doing!.

I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you to.

I've been acting since age 8. I just stopped enjoying it as much as I used to.

There was a point where I was making four movies a year. I was always on a set. I had no stories to tell. I was feeling empty. My life was just luggage and hotels and from set to set, from character to character. And one day, I said, 'And where is mine?' You know? And the moment I started to feel that fear, I stopped and I slowed down.

Sometimes I wake up and think, 'How did I get here?'

My memoir is about my time in film and the decision to leave Hollywood, grow up, and stop pretending.

I did as much as I could in Vancouver. You can only play so many ex-'Falcon Crest' sons in so many movies of the week before you burn out.

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.

I was on cruise control from '85 to '95, and it was my fault. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original material. I wasn't directing. I wasn't writing. That's not who I am.

By the time I was ready for college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think I secretly wanted a show business career, but I was suppressing it.

I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.'