Carmen Ejogo Quotes

I was never really sure what I wanted to do - I'm in awe of these people who knew at age 10 or 12 they wanted to be a brain surgeon, and they did it, and they still are.

When I was in college, there were a couple years there where I was just not sure what to do, and it was actually my mom who suggested I take some journalism classes.

My mother told me I should be a secretary, but I wanted to be an actress from when I was very young.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.

I think it's unreasonable to expect kids at 17 to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. And actually, I guess I had a desire to be an artist, and I did enroll in art school out of high school.

I was hellbent on going to drama school, but my mother, rightly, panicked and persuaded me to go to university on the grounds that a degree would be 'something to fall back on.' Whilst at college, I realised I wasn't good enough or robust enough to be an actress.

My father and his brothers were all lawyers, so I think that the expectation was probably for me to grow up to be an attorney, but it never really fascinated me that much. I was more interested in building things.

My father said that I could always become an actress, but I couldn't go back to college later in life. So I had to first finish my education, and then I could do what I wanted. At the time, I was not pleased, but now, I can't thank him enough. My parents were absolutely right.

If you can be anything else but a writer, be it.

My mom kind of led me toward acting. She wanted to be an actress when she was younger. That made me interested in it when I was a kid, because she and I are very close.

When I was about 12, I came home from middle school and told my parents I wanted to be an actor. My father didn't say it to me, but he told my mom, 'No. I'm not going to allow that. He'll starve to death.' I grew up in a small town in Illinois where being an actor was not something people did.

I wanted to be a writer, and my mother was like, 'No, why don't you become a lawyer?' That sort of thing.

The one mistake I will always kick myself for is not doing 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?' It was written for me.

I had no idea when I graduated from high school and then from graduate school what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that I was ever going to be an actor.

Education was a given, only because of the way I was raised. Truth be told, I thought, at 15 years old, I should go and get a record deal and drop out of school, and my parents would have had none of that. I'm grateful now that my parents were pushing me in that way, because I wasn't mature enough on so many levels to do that.

I was anxious before I decided to go back to acting about what I wanted to do with my life. Once I realized I was sort of interested in acting, I've been pretty lucky and had all these great parts. And I feel pretty much like, 'What will happen will happen.'

Now I tell my mom, I go, 'Mom, you know when I was a kid and you told me to turn off the television and go outside and play?' I'd be like, 'You literally were hurting my career when you did that. You literally stopped me from doing now, what I do for a living.'

I didn't grow up, really, in the film business, even though my parents are both artists. I grew up in New York City. They would never put me into acting. I just kind of wanted it, and I told them that.

Nick Kyrgios, if you don't want to be a professional tennis player, do something else.

My parents could have told me, when I was 12 years old and telling them I wanted to be a wrestler, that it was silly and to be serious and find something more secure and safe, but they didn't. They pushed me as hard as they could.

I am very cautious, and there are not too many decisions I've not discussed with my parents, whether that be about my career or away from the field.

I got a sociology degree and then had an opportunity to go to graduate school. But I said no, because I wanted to give songwriting a shot.

Most of the career choices I've made have been because of my family.

Sometime in your teens you have to decide what you want to do. I knew it had to be cinema.

My parents always said that I would be a lawyer or pilot or doctor - and I always just thought that's what I would do.