Li Bingbing Quotes

I never intended to be a teacher, but once I started teaching, I found that junior high kids are easy to get hooked on, and I stayed for nearly twenty years.

I was about to get a degree in economics when I accepted that I'd be a lousy businessman, and if I didn't give acting a try I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

I was 20 years old, working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi, just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like, 'Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?' But I took a class, and the teacher thought that I had potential, so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning.

I originally envisioned myself doing something with the suffix 'ology' at the end of it, like marine biology or entomology. But after I started to do some acting gigs, I thought it wasn't a bad thing... I said to myself, 'I might as well keep riding this bus until the wheels fall off.'

Modelling was never in my plan. Never.

I kind of fell backwards into acting. I was studying to be a high school teacher. I look now and I understand completely, or actually barely, how much work it is to be a teacher. It's an incredible amount of work.

I've never wanted to be an actress. I came into the industry to be a filmmaker, but let us say fate had other plans for me. I don't want to be the next glamour queen.

I started studying at 26. Before that, I never thought of acting as something that I would ever try.

I didn't expect to become an artist. I was not comfortable going out on the road.

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.

I worked in accounting for two and a half years, realized that wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and decided I was just going to give comedy a try.

All my graduation money went to paying for bartending classes so I could have a side gig. I bartended for two months before I was supposed to move to New York and then two months later I got the job as an understudy in 'Sister Act' and haven't looked back since.

I wanted to be a landscape architect, but I trained as a teacher; I worked in publishing; I was a waitress.

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

I like the idea of being so passionate about everything I do and the fact that I might wake up tomorrow and say 'I want to be a chef,' and just pour myself into that.

When I left Michigan and I came to New York, that was my goal, to be a professional dancer. And I sort of fell into singing by accident in a way.

It was easy for me to leave acting for school, because I wasn't really in it as an adolescent for fulfilling reasons.

I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.

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.

In 2000, I realized I had reached that certain age when the parts get scarcer. So I decided to try my hand at directing.

When I was little, I was actually really shy. I really enjoyed doing school plays, but I found the whole thing terrifying. I cried myself to sleep once because I thought my teacher was going to give me the lead role. I never imagined acting was a viable career.

I did a practical theatre degree, which I took seriously, and then told my parents I wanted to go into acting - because up until that point you could still say you were going to become a teacher. So I told my parents, and they said: 'But of course, that's what we always thought you were doing to do.' Until then, I was still in the acting closet.

I was going to school thinking I was going to do something entirely different, thought acting was just a hobby at that point, met Stanley Kubrick and was like, 'Whoa, this can be an art form, and you can really move people the way you do simply by acting.'

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

It was only when I finished the course and left my graduation diploma on the bus that I realised I'd become an actor.