Karen Fukuhara Quotes

I was a swimsuit model, and I got bored. Acting was challenging. It was very hard and intimidating. We choose to do things in life sometimes that scare the crap outta us. Performing in front of people was my challenge.

At 17, I realized that it's going to be a tough decision to make, but I had the clarity of thought to walk out of cricket and try my luck in acting.

I started out pursuing an acting career out of college when I lived in Los Angeles. When I got an entry into broadcasting, I preferred it. I liked being me, rather than dressing up to be someone else. Now I'm 30 and doing a career of my own and have been in this career for eight years.

I started studying at 26. Before that, I never thought of acting as something that I would ever try.

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.

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

Shortly after I started working as a doctor, I decided to listen to the voice inside me before it was too late. It was now or never, so I decided to explore acting.

It was easy for me to leave acting for school, because I wasn't really in it as an adolescent for fulfilling reasons.

I was about to get a degree in economics when I accepted that I'd be a lousy businessman, and if I didn't give acting a try I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

Between 18 and 26 I acted professionally, on the stage and a little bit on television. Acting is okay, but it's quite pressurized. Then I went to England - I wanted to reinvent myself.

I was working in customer service and had a verbally abusive boss. One day, I decided to quit and pursue my acting passion with everything I had. One week after quitting, I booked 'One Life to Live.'

I'm in the camp that needs to discover and take risks, sometimes it's with the promise of something special and new, sometimes it's to stay awake, either way it's much more stressful with all the uncertainty but worth the pain in the end.

After I quit dancing, I tried a lot of jobs. But I could always bake.

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 had to get out of the Boston area, so I flipped a coin and said, 'Heads - Miami, tails - California. I was in my mid-20s and came out here with no training. Acting wasn't even in my mind.

For a short time I was an assistant to a professional photographer, and I felt that my soul was not there. That is the stage when I decided to stay in London and do a graduate degree.

Always trying new things is always more fun, and it can be scary, but it's always more fun in the end.

Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.

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?'

I grew up in the middle of dairy country in Wisconsin, about as far from any major metropolitan area as you can get. I always assumed I was going to be an actor. I don't know why. I didn't have any reason to think that. In fact, when I finally did try it, when I was in college, I was really bad at it and didn't enjoy it.

I want to get better as an actor, to keep trying to work harder, trying to discover something different. In some ways, it's a pretty frightening experience. But normally, I do tend to walk against fear and hope that I'll be able to survive.

I hoped that I could learn how to combine an education with acting. But I was unhappy with the direction I chose, so I decided to take on a six-month tour for a musical theater performance, thinking that I'd go back to university in a year. That became two years, then three years, until I really realized I am already doing what I love doing.

When I was growing up, I thought I was getting bored of acting, so I left that. Then after a few years, I started missing it. I left my studies mid-way, and I used to give lots of auditions.

In fact I spent a lot of time in my childhood trying to figure out what other people wanted of me. That made me study other people very much. Then I actually started university and I got quite bored. This is when I found out I wanted to be an actor.