Nathan Fillion Quotes

Had acting not taken off, I would've been glad to become a teacher.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

I worked in theater my whole life. My mom was a drama teacher at my middle school. In high school, I was Drama Club President every year, and then I auditioned for conservatory acting programs.

I initially thought I was going to be a teacher. Maybe like an elementary teacher or something like that, which would be fun. Maybe someday.

As actors, you like to think about the luxury of having choices in your career, but for the most part you kind of take whatever comes your way and hope that you carved out something that you're proud of in the end.

I've never considered being a cop. I could be a teacher, I could be a minister, a social worker or a professor. As long I don't have to see blood and see people die every day, if I could inspire or help in their lives, that's something I'd want to do.

I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law, so I didn't go into acting when I got to the States. I thought, 'No, I'll go to school and then I'll be an English teacher; that'll be fun.' But I was horrible as a teacher. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't inspire those kids to take an interest in Milton and Shakespeare and Donne.

I'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

As an actor, I'm always just so pumped when I get any job. To be a working actor takes a lot of luck.

I'm very grateful and fully aware that 90 percent of actors are not working. Going from public school teacher to a show like 'Grey's Anatomy', I love what I do.

I don't want to have to be a teacher so I can be a comedian.

I'm so excited, and I feel very lucky, as to be working in L.A. is a bit of a dream come true for any actor. I definitely have to have a few 'pinch myself' moments as I'm driving to work in Hollywood!

Growing up, I always said I would never go in to education. Both of my parents were teachers - my dad was also a principal and a superintendent. I just didn't want to be part of the school system.

We must question why the smartest students don't choose to become teachers.

So on the one hand in school you're teachers are constantly telling you that you can be whatever it is you want to be as long as you put your mind and heart to it, and yet at the same time I was also getting the clear message of, well, what can you do really?

I ended up dropping out of high school. I'm a high school dropout, which I'm not proud to say, ... I had some teachers that I still think of fondly and were amazing to me. But I had other teachers who said, 'You know what? This dream of yours is a hobby. When are you going to give it up?' I had teachers who I could tell didn't want to be there. And I just couldn't get inspired by someone who didn't want to be there

When I was a freshman in high school, my drama teacher, an incredible, inspirational genius, the guy who got me into acting, he encouraged me to get the lead in a musical. They didn't have any guys.

There is no accountability in the public school system - except for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go to glory.

I certainly never expected to be a professional actor. I never expected to be in movies. I thought I would probably become a teacher.

Anybody who knows the public school teacher world knows there's not a lot of money in teaching. You do it because you love what you do.

... anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.

I had interest in acting. I started as a drama major in college. I got to school and said, "What am I going to do with this?" But I didn't know anybody in the business, and it seemed like - I don't know. I had a teacher who said "Less than 1 percent of you will ever make a living being an actor." That was how we opened the semester.

There is a lot of hype about drama school, I think. If you're an actor in England, that's just the way to get into it but I've been so incredibly lucky in that I was brought up in to it. I still might go to drama school, if I wanted to do theater work, definitely. It's a completely different type of training.

I wanted to be an actor. My parents were not too keen on that.

My parents’ biggest thing was that they just wanted me to graduate high school and go to college. They couldn’t fathom me acting for the rest of my life.