Patrick Wilson Quotes

My father wanted to be an actor, dreamed about being an actor, but he gave it up because my mom and his family told him, "You're never going to make it; it's too tough out there."

The truth is, my father stopped bothering me after Stigmata, because I got to play a priest. That fulfilled his dream. The cop thing was a little overdone to him because my brother was already a police officer.

Even when I was doing well in acting, my dad would say, 'You can still go back to dental school.' But since I've been on '90210,' I haven't heard that.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.

I was the only child, and I know my father had certain thoughts about me. He was a lawyer and extremely literary, but he would have been much happier if I had wanted to be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer. But what I wanted to do was read.

My parents would have loved it if my brother or I had become a doctor or lawyer.

Unlike my mother, who was unashamedly delighted when I decided to become an actor, I always feel that my father, had he lived longer, might have been a touch disapproving of some of my career - I think he might have tutted a bit at 'Men Behaving Badly.'

I told my mom for years that I wanted to be a manicurist, and she'd always be like, 'But what if you went to college and you got a degree?' She'd try to explain how I could actually do a thing that would make me a ton of money, or that I didn't have to just pick the business that was closest to our house.

My father told me, "Don't do anything that would bring shame to the family." I was always mindful of that. When I told him I wanted to pursue a career as an actor, my father said, "Look at what you see on television at the movies, is that what you want to be doing? Do you want to make a life out of that?" And I said, "Daddy, I'm going to change it".

My dad worked for a theatre company that was two minutes away from my primary school, so I'd just walk there after school and watch the rehearsals. I think that's probably when I fell in love with acting and telling stories.

My wife herself had an upbringing where she wasn't allowed to pursue what she wanted to do because of her parents. She wanted to go into photography and journalism, but because classes ran so late, she had to be home at a certain time. We don't want that for our daughter.

I don't think, because I'm going to school for something else, that I will stop being an actress.

My mum was always more pushing me towards the academic side; she wasn't really interested in me having a professional football career.

I was a dramatic kid. I was always like, 'Watch me put on my play, Mom and Dad! You have to watch me put on all these outfits and do this play!' But my family is very academic and straightforward and normal Midwestern people, so the idea that I could act as an actual job wasn't really there.

My mom is very practical, and she originally wanted me to have something to fall back on. She was a little fearful of my becoming an actor because she didn't see it as a way to make a living. My dad, who was born and raised in Cuba, was really cool with it.

I have sisters who act, and I'd always seen it as their thing. I was never in the school plays like them - I wanted to be a painter.

My mother enjoyed acting as well with my father, who used to direct her in plays at his regiment. My sister is an excellent singer. However, it was only me who decided to pursue acting as a career.

My mom actively did not want me to play professionally.

All the adults in my family were actors, so there wasn't much else in terms of role models. I fell in love with that world, being backstage at the theatre.

It's funny 'cos I think a lot about kids who grow up with their parents being really important members of their fields, and they just go the opposite way.

One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting.

And I don’t want to turn actress. I want to do both. I wouldn’t have built the confidence to do acting if I didn’t model.

Do you know why the big brother is born first? It’s to protect the little brothers and sisters that come after him. A brother telling his sister, "I’ll kill you"... You never, ever say something like that.

I never wanted to be an actor. My dad was an actor, and he never brought joy home, so I didn't view it as something that I would want to do. But I got fired as a secretary, and then I started studying, I started doing it just to earn money. And it took me a long time to learn to love it. And what I loved was telling a story. I tried to avoid making plays or films that weren't telling a story that I felt was important. I discovered in the process that it makes you more empathic because you have to enter someone else's reality and learn to see through many other people's eyes.

If you have no brothers and sisters it defines you for life; even when you're thirty you refer to yourself as an only child.