Lennie James Quotes

When I got 'Family Ties', I wasn't even thinking about being an actress. I thought I might become a window dresser.

I'm about to graduate senior year and I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't want to lose the momentum with what I'm doing now as an actress.

Once I moved to Chicago and started trying to get acting jobs, I just tended to book more things that were comedically based than anything else. I never had the preconceived notion, 'I will be a comedic actor.' I just thought, 'I'll go into acting and see what kind of work I can get.'

Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.

When we moved to L.A., I started going out for more commercials, and then one day they emailed me a movie script. The first thing I said was, 'No way. I love commercials.'

I was an assistant director for a year, and I realized, 'God, this is a lot of hard work. This is going to take time. So what's the shortcut? What's the better option?' Then thankfully, someone said, 'Why don't you become an actor?'

I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.

I don't see myself doing catalog shoots in Madrid anymore like I was doing two years ago. I hope that the acting side of things grows.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.

The only reason my work seems to be eclectic up to a certain period is because I was a failure as an actor.

In high school, my goal was to be a writer for SNL, then I got into the acting.

It's a very odd thing with Hollywood, where you do stand-up, you're good at it, then they go, 'How would you like to be a horrible actor?' Then you say, 'All right, that sounds good. I'll do that.'

I thought I was going to be a theater actor. I moved to New York after college and did some plays and worked a lot. Once the realities of living as a theatrical actor hit me, I realized I wanted to start making a little bit of money and not have to bartend and work in theater.

I guess I stopped acting when I was 18 and didn't pick it up again until I was 21. That wasn't the plan, though. When I first started at Yale, the plan was to do a movie each summer.

I left 'Law and Order' because I really honestly did want to do movies and did want to be a movie star since I was a little girl.

I don't speak English, so I cannot foresee a career in Hollywood. But I do see myself more and more as an actress rather than a dancer.

I didn't really have any aspirations to do TV when I first decided to be an actor.

I came to New York to be an actor and I became a film producer first.

I had my heart set on becoming an English teacher, but stumbled into acting after meeting a theatrical agent in my dad's restaurant in San Diego.

I went there and helped him shuffle pictures of people, and one of the agents asked me if I was interested in acting. Of course, I was a little bit interested in it; I'm sure that's part of the reason I moved to L.A. even though I never admitted it to myself.

I wanted to be a lawyer. I realized I don't really want to be a lawyer. I want to play a lawyer. Thank God I figured that out.

I'm not good at Disney acting. I'm really not. I never was on that audition list, which I don't mind. I don't know. I look back, and I'm kind of wiping my forehead at the thought of, 'What if I had gone that route?'

I hadn't really thought about doing any acting at all post-'Center Stage.'

I did a year of 'Guiding Light', and I was going to be a movie actor or a stage actor, but not a TV actor. That just wasn't going to happen. And obviously, things changed so remarkably.

I think, as a kid, whenever you say you want to be an actor, you get discouraged, so perhaps if I had have listened to those people telling me that, I might have gone down the route of a teacher. But I was never really going to do that.