Quote

My parents, and especially my mother, encouraged by the director of the local school which I was attending, wanted in spite of everything to send me to a National School of Arts and Crafts so that I could later become an engineer.

My dad wanted me to be a professional person, which I was - I was a civil engineer. I graduated from civil engineering at USC in California. I became an engineer, and I helped design the roads for the L.A. County Roads Department. And I did that for about one and a half years in a sense to please my parents - to be a 'respectable' person.

My parents wanted me to be a teacher. Because I could work most of the year and pursue the things that I love to do during the summer. It just seemed like a good plan.

When I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, it was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. Not because it was highfalutin' in any way - just because they didn't know anybody in that field. They were anxious of a profession they knew nothing about.

I went to a public high school with a magnet program for law and psychology. But right before my junior year, I decided that I wanted to leave and become an actress, so I graduated early and moved out to L.A.

Before high school ended, I started applying to college. It really wasn't even a choice because of the brainwashing of my parents.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.

My parents wanted me to go to law school.

My dad was a singer in a band and neither of my parents went to college, and I ended up getting into Harvard and was the first person in my family that went to college and it happened to be Harvard.