And then, as the years went on, I just kept moving along, busting into doors and getting roles, until I started to actually believe that what these other people were saying was true.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Until I came out, my acting was all about disguise, and thereafter it became about telling the truth.
I was one of those weirdos who, at six years old, was telling everybody that I wanted to be an actor. I saw my sister in a play and realized that I wanted to play make believe in front of people; I was always goofing around and putting on shows for my family.
The big turn in the late '90s was that I realized I was going to be doing this for a long time. I was fairly sure I was going to be an actor for the rest of my life, which I think calmed me down.
I went through a huge transition in my life where everything and everyone I knew and trusted didn't turn out to be that way.
I stayed true to my dreams and, eventually, they came true.
The older I get, the more I'm starting to believe in myself. I'm beginning to think of roles that I could do that I would not have allowed myself to think of before, saying: 'That's not for me, that's for the big guns.'
It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career.
I did a year of 'Guiding Light', and I was going to be a movie actor or a stage actor, but not a TV actor. That just wasn't going to happen. And obviously, things changed so remarkably.
I have always chosen roles that I believed in - not ones that I thought might further my career.
And one thing that I always believed and that I knew for certain was that I could never have sustained a personal relationship while I worked this hard, or while I was that driven this intensely by the story.