Mariana Klaveno Quotes

I grew up in such a small area that there really weren't any acting classes. So I had to wait till I got to college.

I didn't start acting until I was in college, which was in the 70's.

Kylie and I were both taking piano lessons at the time and didn't think of acting. A friend rang mum up and said, 'How about bringing Kylie and Danielle in because they might be right for the part?'

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. I lived in Grand Blanc, Michigan for a year and that's when I got involved in acting and took classes there. A manager who saw me at the agency I was at in Michigan wanted me to come out to L.A.

I went to Long Beach State, started out as an actor.

I'm from Denver, and there is really nothing acting-wise to do there except for theater. I did everything I could get my hands on until I was able to make it to L.A.

I feel like people who come out to Los Angeles hoping to be an actor give up too easily, and/or they don't put in the amount of time that it really does take.

I did this class when I first moved to California. It was a 'Kids on Camera' class up in the Bay Area. That was good for just getting me excited in acting and everything. Then once I started working down L.A., I just stuck to my acting coach, and she helps me prepare with auditions and that sort of thing.

I've called myself an actor - I won't say I've been an actor, but I've called myself an actor - since 1989. That's when I moved to Los Angeles.

For my first role, I had to audition five times. I've gotten a lot of no's and rejections. But I just had to keep working hard. I took classes; I worked on my craft and continued to work with an acting coach and just didn't give up on myself.

My first exposure to TV, film, theater, the idea of what acting was, is I was a little kid, and my mom's best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Mass. Her name was Patty Collinge.

When I was little, I didn't even know what acting was. But I was in commercials - baby toy commercials like Fisher-Price.

When I first moved out to L.A., I was still 17. The deal with my dad was that I would be able to live out there if I were to treat my acting classes like college classes. So when I moved, that's all I did: trained and auditioned.

I can never remember a time when I didn't want to be an actress, to be honest. And so, all through high school, I knew that I was gonna go to college in Los Angeles. I just didn't know where. And I knew that I was gonna try to get my theater degree.

I didn't really get into acting until halfway through college. Once I graduated I pursued it professionally, but it wasn't like I was always an actress.

I don't know if it was a defining moment. I knew it as soon as I could comprehend the possibility of having a career. I knew very young I wanted to be a movie star. As much as I grew into love of the craft. As soon as I could speak I was auditioning and going to classes every day. It was my life.

When it came time for college, I told my parents I was going to major in acting. And they were so removed from anything to do with show business - my dad built our house and my mom grew our food.

As a kid, I was fortunate that we grew up near a children's theater, with all different classes and things; so as a kid I took classes there and as I got into high school I did all the community theater stuff. Then I came to college here in New York, going to Marymount Manhattan, and studied acting there. But most of the training I got was from working. Working with really great people.

I regret not having enough training, I trained for a year at The Royal Court, but I very quickly went off to do films and television.

It was kind of an amazing class. I went to the Strasberg Institute in New York for a little while after I got there, and I've never seen anybody who was in any of my classes there ever again. I mean, that's not to say they didn't become somebody. I'm not sure. I mean, Sam Jackson could've been in my class, for all I remember.

I've taken [acting] class with Larry Moss, who's more kind of in the theater world, so he's really educated me about playwrights.

When I began doing theatre in high school I saw that I could get laughs from people but I didn't really connect that to going on and becoming a comedian. I was interested in acting and while I was at Boston College I was part of an improv group, Mother's Fleabag, which had a long history and has been known as one of the best college improvisation groups in the U.S.

The headmistress was a very well-respected theater teacher. She taught me what stage left and stage right were, what a director was, and what all these things meant, which was something I had no concept of. She sent me off to drama school, at age 18, and I stayed there for three years. Before I knew it, I was working on a TV show.

Acting is something that I couldn't recommend to anyone because the odds of it working out are so insane. I don't know how it worked out for me. I had no connections to this industry. I had no ins anywhere.

I went to New York out of college, and in my day, we were told that was the way you became a good actor. You don't go to Hollywood, you go straight to New York and work in the theater. So that's what most of the people I knew did.