Daniel Lyons Quotes

I had to figure out at 61 years of age: 'Holy moly! Who am I?'

Me personally, I'm a guy who it took a long time to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. I relate to a lot of that finding oneself a little later in the game, or being thrown a curve later in the game.

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.

When I turned 40, subconsciously, life was a blank sheet. Before, it was disjointed, and I was very displaced and quite mad, but it was a brilliant time. Everyone thinks I must have been unhappy.

Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.

I was very frightened when I turned forty. I suddenly thought I ought to wake up and be speaking with the voice of God.

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

My characters tend to be more dynamic because they're reaching that point in their lives where their old way of being is breaking down. They're conflicted by the idea that they don't know what's next. You could call it Kierkegaard's leap of faith, when you get tired of sort of reinventing yourself on a very superficial level.

I always did think that when I turned 40, I'd start coming into my own.

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 lost myself in the process and I realized how much I had identified myself with Maria Shriver, newswoman. When that was gone, I had to really sit back and go, 'Well, actually, who am I today?'

Maybe a theme that touches all of my work is people reinventing themselves.

I didn't go to America to be a star, but to try to reclaim my life.

When I left HEEP I didn't know what I wanted! It took me a long time to adjust to life away from the band and the only thing I knew was that I didn't want to repeat my mistakes!

It is kind of hard to figure out who you are when you've lost your job at age 13, when that was basically how you identified yourself.

There comes a point in many people's lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play.

I have struggled with identity all my life. It's not like something that just happened last week.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

I think I went through my phase of feeling sort of invisible when I left my small hometown in Canada and moved to the big city of Vancouver. I kind of had to decide right there in that moment what I was going to do with the rest of my life and make a thousand decisions after finishing high school. Fortunately, I chose acting.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.

I've never been into what am I going to do next, trying to reinvent myself.

Identity has been such an explosive territory for me... so hard, so painful at times.

When I turned 50, I asked some of my girlfriends, all actresses of the same age, 'What are we going to do now?' I wanted to go live somewhere for a while, learn archaeology, or take part in healing the world on some level. I wanted to dig deep and say, 'Who am I now? What do I have to offer? What do I have to learn?'

I did have a midlife crisis.

'My Struggle' came from a place of questioning and feelings of inauthenticity and frustration, and almost all of that is gone.