Andrew Young Quotes

It's a fine line of doing what's good for your life and what your parents want you to do, but also following your dreams. With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that.

The college kids should think hard about what they're doing. If you have a great idea for a company, there's no right time to start it, and it's often better to start it sooner rather than later. I went to Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law School, and if I had to do it over again, I might still do those things, but I wish I had asked the type of questions like, why I was doing it, was it just for the status and prestige, or was it because I was really interested in the substance of it.

I needed the time to go to college and spend years with people who aren't in the business and become a person on my own in order to be the person that I am and the performer that I am. I wouldn't give that up to be in blockbusters or have more money.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.

My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me to live in what is now called Fashionable Dublin Four. But she felt that this was a vain hope. I was a bit loud to make a nice professional wife, and anyway, I was too keen on spending my holidays in far flung places to meet any of these people.

I'd started acting as a child. But I wanted to see if it was something my true personality was interested in. I stepped away from offers when I took five years off to go to college. I've only really just decided to whole-heartedly embrace acting.

I've had my taste of intense fame, and I've got it out of my system. Now I'm free to choose parts which fulfil me in different ways.

My mom is the type of mom who wonders why I haven't used my psychology degree to become a successful clinical psychologist.

I want to be fulfilled in myself, rather than try to follow exactly in my father's footsteps.

I really wanted to be a doctor, until my freshman year of college when I realized that while I was good at chemistry and biology, I really wasn't feeling challenged by it.

If the kids did want to get into showbiz then so be it, but I would never project anything on to my children.

I believe in allowing your child to be who they want to be - as long as they want to be something great.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

No, I like today's cinema a lot. But I've spent so many decades only making movies. There's so much that I still want to do. Like, live. It's only up to me.

I wanted to pursue my own thing - I had desires, ideas I wanted to accomplish, and I needed to be on my own for that.

I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.

My mom, she wanted me to go to college and then after that you could do what you want.

Like every father who wants his son to be either an engineer or a doctor, my father wanted me to become a doctor. I never did.

I basically applied to law school as a way of telling my parents that I wasn't going to medical school.

I remember feeling a huge amount of anxiety and worry and pressure. At that point I was headed into acting school. That was 100 percent the only thing I thought I wanted to do. But then I got through my first year of college, and I was, like, humming and rolling around, pretending to be a lion in acting classes at NYU and visiting our classmate Charlie Gregg at Harvard, where he was actually learning things. So I changed my mind: I decided I actually wanted a different kind of education, and that was an incredibly freeing idea.

Be yourself, find out what you love, find out what you really want to do, and go do it. And don't depend on people who don't have your best interests at heart.

I think that at a certain stage those early ambitions burn away, partly because you achieve something, you get something done, you get some notoriety. And then the particularities of who you are and what your deepest commitments are begin expressing themselves. You're not just chasing the idea of "me" being important, but you, rather, are chasing a particular passion.

Nobody knows what you want except you. And nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. Wanting some other way to live is proof enough of deserving it. Having it is hard work, but not having it is sheer hell.

We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.