Quotes About Childhood

Comedy was why I got into acting the first place. Peter Sellers was a huge influence on my wanting to act. I grew up with him and found him hysterical. The Pink Panther films were an inspiration, from my earliest childhood days, when I was watching them with my brother and my dad.

When I was a child, I wanted to be... a fairy. I still do, really, except that now I've now graduated to wanting to be a pixie.

I had a basketball net that my dad had put up outside. I went out there and dribbled all day long. I wanted to play basketball. Then I'd go baseball, and then I'd go to football. I remember playing football in a plowed field. I grew up going from one thing to the next wanting to play something.

I started to write things down, as a very young child, wanting to find a way to remember - to keep close, somehow - moments that made an impression on me.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

Being an actor somehow can be a perverse extension of that feeling we generally all have as children, that feeling of wanting to please. Of course you're looking for affirmation, encouragement.

My parents took me to a movie, and I remember wanting to sit apart from them for some reason. I wanted to be a big boy or whatever. I remember looking up on that screen. It was a movie about medieval knights. All I remember is saying, 'I want to do that. I want to make movies.'

I don't think anyone should grow up wanting to go around killing people. I don't think anyone should grow up wanting to be a secret agent.

One of the things that I first remember wanting to be was a 'geolisty' - that was the best I could say when I was a kid. That was right after I stopped wanting to be a fireman or a truck driver. Because my dad is a paleontologist who worked with the Smithsonian, I got to see the bones up close and the exhibits behind the scenes there.

My sister and I fought a lot when we were kids. I was the little bratty sister, and she would kind of walk away, not wanting to be associated with me.

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 started off singing when I was little. My parents have said I was singing at 3 years old. So I think it was just something I probably came into this world wanting to do and knowing I was going to do.

Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying. I was 4 or 5 or whatever. I think it's a fairly common story.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

That I am today the face of Louis Vuitton almost seems like a twist of fate. You dream back to front, wanting the rewards before putting the work in. And then you work, get on with life, and just sometimes these childhood dreams have a way of catching up with you. This is a true privilege for which I am eternally grateful.

I didn't really think about wanting to be a prince when I was a kid.

What happens in the context of war is that, in order for you to make a child into a killer, you destroy everything that they know, which is what happened to me and my town. My family was killed, all of my family, so I had nothing.

As a chind in Dublin, I can remember having my plate piled high with four or five vegetables - and I'm convinced to this day that my mother's home cooking helped to ward off illness.

I remember when I was little, I look through my mother's wardrobe, and search for whatever vintage Chanel I could find.

Fantasy was something I'd read as a child. And, in fact, my teachers despaired a little bit because I refused to give up Enid Blyton. Then I walked through the wardrobe with C. S. Lewis, and I don't think I actually have returned fully from the wardrobe. So, fantasy was something that was in my life from quite young.

Growing up, my mom made us this amazing thing called The Mack Theatrical Wardrobe. It was a massive trunk filled with everything that you'd want as a kid if you were into imagination and play.

Using clothes to transform was a huge part of my childhood. But also, I've been acting forever, and wardrobe changes the way you feel, so it totally indicates the character you're going to play.

I wasn't the kid who lined up her toys, although when it came to Barbies and that little traveling wardrobe with the drawers and the little shoes, my stuff was always on hangers and the shoes were always in pairs. Things had their places.

Even when I was a little kid, I hated to dress up. I hated to put on regular shoes. I wanted to play all the time. I hate to wear any kind of coat or sweater. I've never liked hot. I've never liked to be warm.