When you're a kid, you think 'Oh, it's so great. I'm going to go to Hollywood. I'm going to go to Broadway.' For a long time, it was such a novelty.
This is a photo as I would wish myself to look all the time. Then I would maybe have a chance to come to Hollywood.
As a theater actor I always wondered, 'Is there a place for me in Hollywood?'
I remember in Indonesia, there was this actor in a film that got pretty big internationally, and he went to Hollywood. Seeing an Indonesian guy doing that when I was 13 or 14, it really motivated me.
There's this assumption that as an actor, Hollywood is always the end point, but I never thought along those lines.
'Grease' is one of the movies that made me want to be an entertainer, and I have literally been waiting my whole life to play Sandy.
I think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.
The whole idea of doing the Hollywood thing never even occurred to me. When you grow up on the East coast, Hollywood seems like this fantasy land and you don't think that people can actually make a living there.
I think when I started acting, the whole time I was working towards one day coming to America. Hollywood, in particular, is seen to be the center of this industry, and I was just waiting for the right time to come.
You're taught - consciously or sub-consciously - to make an indie so you can get through that terrible process and get to Hollywood. I realized when I got there, 'Oh, no; I think I'm better over here.'
I had a scholarship to Stanford because I won three California Speech tournaments. Before I started Stanford, I told my mother I wanted to take a bus into Hollywood and see if I could get an agent.
I love the Western genre. In fact, one of my dreams is to play a cowboy on screen, like Clint Eastwood. I don't think it's going to happen, but you can always hope.
You thought the stage, you thought Broadway: that was the pot at the end of the rainbow. The idea of being in Hollywood was like going to the Moon or Mars.
