Skip to main content

Daily Inspiration Quote by Gael Garcia Bernal

"I always wanted to act, but I never thought it would be my profession. I thought that I'd end up doing other things, but that in the meantime I'd do plays"

About this Quote

There’s a quiet radicalism in how Gael Garcia Bernal frames ambition: not as a straight shot, but as something you practice in the margins until life catches up. He’s not selling the tidy myth of destiny, the “I knew from day one” storyline that celebrity culture loves because it flatters audiences into believing success is just clarity plus grit. Instead, he describes acting as a persistent want paired with a realistic expectation that the world might not reward it. That tension is the subtext: desire without entitlement.

The phrase “in the meantime” does a lot of work. It suggests plays weren’t a stepping-stone so much as a lifeline - a way of staying close to the thing he cared about while bracing for a more conventional future. That’s a familiar posture for artists outside the most privileged pipelines: you keep the craft alive because it gives your life shape, not because you’re certain it will pay rent.

Context matters, too. Bernal comes out of a Latin American film and theater ecosystem where “profession” can feel like a fragile category - dependent on funding cycles, politics, and the whims of international attention. So when he distinguishes between wanting to act and imagining it as a job, he’s pointing to the distance between vocation and viable career.

What makes the line land is its modesty. It’s a refusal to romanticize struggle or rewrite it as inevitability. The implied message to younger creatives is less “believe in yourself” than “keep making work, even if your life plan has an asterisk.”

Quote Details

TopicCareer
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Bernal, Gael Garcia. (2026, January 16). I always wanted to act, but I never thought it would be my profession. I thought that I'd end up doing other things, but that in the meantime I'd do plays. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-wanted-to-act-but-i-never-thought-it-111744/

Chicago Style
Bernal, Gael Garcia. "I always wanted to act, but I never thought it would be my profession. I thought that I'd end up doing other things, but that in the meantime I'd do plays." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-wanted-to-act-but-i-never-thought-it-111744/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I always wanted to act, but I never thought it would be my profession. I thought that I'd end up doing other things, but that in the meantime I'd do plays." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-wanted-to-act-but-i-never-thought-it-111744/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Gael Add to List
Gael Garcia Bernal quote on theater, craft, and the meantime
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

Mexico Flag

Gael Garcia Bernal (born November 30, 1978) is a Actor from Mexico.

8 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Adam Rickitt, Actor