Nicola Walker Quotes

If you had asked me, did I have everything nailed down and wired about what I wanted to do, and was I following some real plan? No. In fact, by the time I was in my mid-20s or even late-20s, and I was still in the law firm, I really was starting to get a little nervous that I didn't know what I was going to do.

I don't want to say I took myself too seriously, but I put a lot of pressure on myself coming out of school. I saw so many people leave the business behind, certain opportunities disappear for folks who had to go into other professions. That kind of terrified me. As a result, I wanted things to happen really quickly.

Something clicked, and I was like, 'I gotta be prepared. This could end at any time.' That was my second year in the league. From that point on I started doing broadcasting and things like that in an attempt to find my passion - something I could do after football.

I try not to live in the future too much; that can make you crazy as an actor. There are so many people who are obsessed about their career path, like it's something which you can control, which fundamentally you can't.

In today's world, most people are working side jobs while waiting to do what they really want to do.

I really don't have a career plan. I like being challenged and thrown around. But it's only acting.

I didn't want to be an accountant; I found myself being a banker, which was a bit different. I went to university, and I was going to do a Ph.D. in the States, but I didn't get the funding for it, so I had two years where I had a bit of a wobble and didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I ended up working as a banker.

I have all this time between projects, and I'm not so sure that's a healthy thing. It's scary, because at 36 I'm woefully unqualified for anything else.

Well, I was coming off of being on 'Law & Order,' and I was a little worried that it might be the end of my career - I've never been one of those actors with a lot of confidence that the next good job will come along.

I've accomplished everything a person can accomplish on a basketball court, but I never thought about the future when I was younger. I never made plans for the next stage in my life.

My mother always said I should have a back-up profession if the acting doesn't work out.

There was a time, after I earned my graduate degree and before I sold my first novel, when it looked like I might have to get an office job.

It's the typical mid-life crisis kind of thing, where you just stop and wonder, 'Should I go back to university and get a law degree?' I kind of looked around me and thought, 'What kind of idiot am I that I've just spent the last 10 years writing novels? Financially, I'm pretty much where I was when I was 28.'

It's a good time for me, but it's only recently I've become comfortable in my job. At the start, it's hard having the nerve to call yourself an actor, let alone doing it. I gave myself two years after drama school, and if I didn't make it, then I'd give it up.

I thought my acting career was going to just last forever - and I didn't plan on it ending at 41, 42 years of age.

I don't see myself acting for the rest of my life.

I used to have a theory in my mind that if no serious move had happened before I was 38 - not 40, oddly - then I would move into management or something. Fortunately, I was offered 'The Frost Report' when I was 37, so that was a close thing, too.

I don't know if I will be acting all my life, honestly.

I'm not great at judging a career. Or planning one.

Your post-college years should be an exploratory time in your professional life. From your early twenties and on into your early thirties, you should feel free to explore your professional prospects. Keep an open mind, and don't expect to get everything right straight out of the gate. Be prepared to start over once or twice.

I realised I had spent the majority of my adult life doing two characters - Maude from 1972-'79 and Dorothy from 1985-'92 - and I really didn't know what I wanted to do after 'Golden Girls.' I knew what I didn't want to do - any more sitcoms, or wait for the next great role that might never come.

I don't love being an actor, but I'm not qualified to be anything else. I was an auto mechanic and drove a tow truck and tried to go to school to be a paramedic.

Personally, I have nothing to fall back on, and that creates a weird ambition that you have to be good at acting because you can't be good at anything else. I wish I had gone for my degree - that acting wasn't this be-all-and-end-all.

You don't have to be in our industry to have a panic attack about your career when you're pregnant. Even if you're a lawyer, you can think, 'I'm scared to take time off because I don't want to get passed by.'

After being an actor, producing 'One By Two' was a natural progression.