I moved when I was 16. I had no clue what to expect in moving to L.A. I had no clue, really, about what acting was. I just knew that I wanted to do it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I moved to L.A. right after I finished high school, for three years, because everybody was telling me it was important to get down there, and then I kind of just decided for myself that I didn't need to be there to be doing this. I wanted out of some of the chaos that comes with living here and being an actor.
I couldn't get an acting job to save my life when I moved to L.A.
After high school, I was going to move out to L.A. and try to pursue my dreams of acting. My parents said, 'That's fine. We support you, but you have to go to school,' which was fine because I'm a studious person anyway; I enjoy it.
I went to L.A. and got an acting coach for one day. Then I went in to audition and I smashed it. You have to take risks, and one thing I know about people: your presence is everything.
For basically two years, I took acting classes and found my own stride in L.A.
When I was seven, I had been very vocal about wanting to be an actor. And my mom decided that we would try it out for a couple weeks and come to L.A. from Sacramento.
I was working in Chicago, in theater and in commercials and anything that anybody would let me do. When I moved to L.A., I had made a choice to be a character actor, meaning that I wanted to become somebody else. That's what attracted me to becoming an actor in the first place.
My parents always instilled in me this feeling of wanting to be a normal person. I never moved out to L.A. as a kid and got into that scene and that whole thing that happens to kid actors that's the reason they go off the deep end.
I knew I wanted to act, and I was really driven, so I kept going for it. We moved to L.A. full-time when I was 8 or 9.
When I first moved out to L.A., I was still 17. The deal with my dad was that I would be able to live out there if I were to treat my acting classes like college classes. So when I moved, that's all I did: trained and auditioned.