Jonathan LaPaglia Quotes

I've sort of become the poster boy for quitting your job and following your dreams.

I told everyone that acting's for losers and I needed to get an education. But something kept telling me to give it one last chance. In the end, I lasted a month on the M.B.A. and then decided to quit, come back to L.A., and try again.

I moved to Los Angeles when I was about 20, all by myself. It was exciting. I had this moment when I felt like I needed to put on my big-boy pants and just make that leap to see what would happen.

The hardest part when I decided to move into acting was trusting I'd made the right decision.

A friend of mine from New York asked me what I want to do, and I responded with, 'I want to make movies.' He responded with, 'Guess what? They're not making movies on Martha's Vineyard.' Literally ten minutes later, I was packing my bags.

One small decision, for me to get on a flight from Finland to the U.K. - I had no idea how that one small thing could just change my whole life forever.

When I quit my internship and started doing standup to pursue my dreams and do that full time - I feel like that's when I 'Americaned.'

I am an engineer by profession, but I knew I wanted to act. My parents always encouraged me, and when my father shifted to Mumbai for work for a brief while, I came along.

I decided to start acting in my mid-twenties. I studied pre-med, and I have a bachelor's degree in Biology, so when I decided to pursue a different career, I got a lot of, 'What on earth are you doing?' But, I gave myself a year and thought, 'You know what, I'm going to just beat the odds.'

It wasn't easy at all for a qualified engineer to take the decision of giving it up, leave Punjab and try to make a name in films. But I really wanted to be an actor, hence I took the decision.

One day I woke up, had an early mid-life crisis, and decided it all had to change. I went and did Logan Murray's comedy course for 11 weeks and then started sneakily doing open-spot gigs, and that was it.

Upon graduation, I hit a wall. All of my good friends from UCLA were taking on jobs they were passionate about, and I felt left behind. It took a bit of soul searching, but in the end, I finally had the guts to pursue acting.

Acting was never something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so it was easy to walk away.

I don't think me walking away from modeling was scary for me. In hindsight, I think it was very risky, when you talk about risk. Because it paid the bills.

I fell in love with social work, and that was my undoing as a poet.

So often, we're expected to maintain some sort of standard - that won't get you where you need to go. One of the most daring things I've done is drop out of graduate school. I had no job, but something inside me was saying, 'Go! Be in the world!' I had to listen to myself, and it worked out. I still think, 'Who was that girl?'

I definitely want to get out of tennis and try something completely different.

It's been dawning on me slowly that for the past 35 years I have been cast against type, and I'm finally getting to do what I really wanted to do.

I was in chemical engineering at Cornell University. My girlfriend at the time dared me to do a play. I knew there was something I wanted, not necessarily engineering.

I just follow my heart.

I had been on the road for a long time and was not really getting anywhere. Bob Johnston, a friend of mine, had taken over Columbia in Nashville. He asked me if I wanted to come down. I did - thank God I did.

I was a litigation lawyer, following the crowd off the proverbial cliff, when I pressed the pause button.

I left advertising as fast as I could in 1961. And I haven't ever thought about going back.

When I moved to New York at 22, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took an improv class, and the first scene I did, I felt like 'I want to do this for the rest of my life.' It was the first time I ever felt like that about anything. I tried to make a living off improv.

I didn't want to break with my family. I wasn't about to make waves. But I had this feeling I wanted to do something that I liked to do. Acting's what I liked to do most. There must have been a moment when I felt, 'Oh, my God, I like this and what am I going to do about it?'