Sam Neill Quotes

I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful, and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater, I was, in all likelihood, not going to find financial success.

My mother and father were supportive. But in an Italian family, you kind of work with your hands, or you are an engineer or a doctor. But an actor was something they couldn't get hold of. They were afraid I wouldn't be able to make a living, and for many years, they were right.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

I went to Brown University, but my mom said I couldn't be an artist because I would starve.

I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer. I came from a family just above working class, just below middle class, a great family of wonderful values. The idea of me having a chance for a law degree was enticing. Enticing to me but also very enticing to my family.

To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.

I've been crazy lucky that I've never had a day job. I get really close to having no money, then I always wind up getting some kind of great job.

I didn't think I was going to be an actress. Everybody in my family was in films, and they succeeded so much, I thought, 'It's better for me to do something else,' and they agreed.

I wasn't tempted to go into academia for a second.

My father is a very successful man in the corporate world, and I am his only son. He had certain dreams for me. I was scared to tell him that I wanted to be an actor.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

What I really honestly want is just to be working steadily... I would love to just be on a great TV show and have it run for awhile.

I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, and they were getting ready for a life of unemployment, so they're just happy I'm in work!

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family. My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it.

Had I not made it big, my family would have told me to recheck my decision. Now that I am successful, there is no way. They have to accept it gracefully.

My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.

My father believed a real man didn't read, and my parents hoped I'd get some sense and find a job in insurance.

In the India I was growing up in, history wasn't really a wise career option. People would joke and say, 'History's okay, but what's your actual job?' I didn't come from a privileged background and couldn't afford to be irresponsible, so I did the pragmatic thing and did a MBA.

If you are afraid to fail, then you should go and become a banker.

I guess if I weren't an actor, I'd be a history professor.

Acting is a great way to make a living, especially when I consider what my alternatives were and probably still are. I mean, you are only making movies. It is a lot less pressure than being a surgeon; although it seemed like the only other thing that I was qualified for was manual labour.

My parents owned a pharmacy in Budapest, which gave us a comfortable living. As I was their only child, they wanted me to become a pharmacist. But my own preference would have been to study philosophy and mathematics.

My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.

When I decided to go to university I didn't know what I wanted to do. When I had an opportunity to take an elective I took Drama by chance, even though I'd never taken a Drama course or even been in a play in high school. Two years later I was majoring in Drama and I knew I wanted to be an actor.