David Copperfield Quotes

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 parents didn't want me to go into show business. They were afraid of what would happen if I didn't succeed. They wanted me to get married and have babies. I never saw marriage and family in my life.

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.

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".

It was always acting for me, since I was about 15. My middle brother always wanted to be a news anchor, so we always felt that he'd be the one to take over for dad, so we could go and do our thing.

I can't pass on an acting career to my kids. But I'm going to try to juggle both.

I remember when I was a kid, with the acting thing, I resented it because, you know, you don't want to do what your parents want you to do.

My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you're an immigrant, you know you'll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way - being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.

I once asked my father what he wanted me to be. To my horror, he said, 'sociologist.'

It was actually my older brother who wanted to start acting. He would point at the TV as a kid and tell my mom he wanted to do it, and he would act his favorite scenes from 'Home Alone.'

I wanted to be a child actor so bad that every day I'd beg my parents if I could audition, but my mom said, 'Not until you can drive yourself to auditions.'

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.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.

Though I technically come from a film family, my father had stopped making films even before my brother and I were born. So I did not really grow up in a filmi environment. And when I was growing up, becoming an actress was still quite a taboo. And you may not believe this, but even my father did not want me to join films.

My brother Robert wanted to act from a very early age, and there was always a part of me that said we couldn't have two actors in the family because our parents would go mental. So I became a runner for the Robert Stigwood Organisation and, one way or another, worked my way up to movie publicist.

I was always a closet lover of acting. My mom was very practical. She never, ever restricted our dreams, always told us we could do or be anything. Then I said, 'Maybe I want to be an actor'. And she said, 'Maybe not that'.

An agent saw one of the plays I did at ACT, but my mom was like, No, she's too young. I became so annoying that a year and a half later she just couldn't stand hearing me any more!

You grow up in a Sicilian household, becoming an actor is not a big leap.

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.'

My parents are desperate, they keep saying: 'Please stop doing these angsty roles; make it easier for us.' So, yeah, I'd love to do some comedy.

Police work was fascinating, and I didn't imagine that acting was something a kid from San Mateo, California, could really pursue.

I always revered people that I thought had an idea and proceeded through with it. I guess I've been that way since the day I called my father and told him I was going to study acting and maybe try to see if I could do well with that, and he told me: "Don't do that. You don't want to do that, that's just dream stuff. Get a legitimate job and move forward."

So I went home and I told my mom that I wanted to quit and be an actress and she said, “Huh, that sounds fascinating. It’s wonderful!” And I told my father and he literally said, “I don’t care if you want to be an elephant trainer if it makes you happy.”

There's nothing wrong with making little kids happy, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to be an adult actress. I mean a grown-up actress.