I did an internship in the Silicon Valley during the Internet boom. I couldn't imagine sitting in a cubicle the rest of my life, so I gave acting a try. I would have been happy doing theater and making nothing.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was very interested in theatre, mostly in stage design. I did a little bit of acting.
A career in film didn't seem like something I could attain. Whereas I grew up next to New York City, and I spent my life going into New York City seeing plays, and I was a theater actor in school. Acting on the stage felt really natural to me, and I liked it, and I wasn't terrible at it.
So most of my acting experience came in college when I was living away from them. I acted in various independent films, and I got some commercial work and stuff like that.
I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.
I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I'd begun to write a little bit.
I took myself out of the business to study film at NYU and the School of Visual Arts. I grew up on movie sets and was fascinated with the camera and behind-the-scenes work. I felt it would help my career as an actor if I knew all aspects of film.
I'd trained at the University of Washington and had a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting.
I actually got hurt in a steel factory in 1985 and so that changed my life. I went to a junior college and that's where I discovered acting.
I was too practical to major in theater. Acting - what was I going to do with acting? There was no future in it.
I always wanted to be an actor, even as a little kid. So I went to drama school in the late '60s at Carnegie Mellon.