"I grew up thinking that whatever I wanted to do, I could do"
About this Quote
The phrasing matters: “whatever I wanted to do” is deliberately expansive, almost childlike in its lack of qualifiers. No mention of talent, access, or luck. That omission is the subtext. In Hollywood, confidence is both armor and currency; you’re expected to project inevitability before you’ve earned it. Principal’s statement reads as a survival strategy: internalize boundless agency early, because the external world will try to negotiate it down to something “realistic.”
There’s also a faint, interesting tension between the optimism and its likely audience. When a successful actress says this, it’s part inspiration, part retrospective mythmaking. It smooths over the messy middle - the auditions, the gatekeepers, the moments when “want” isn’t enough - into a single, polished origin story. That’s not dishonest so much as culturally useful: it reframes ambition as natural, even wholesome, in a business that often punishes women for having it.
Quote Details
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Principal, Victoria. (2026, January 17). I grew up thinking that whatever I wanted to do, I could do. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-grew-up-thinking-that-whatever-i-wanted-to-do-i-66195/
Chicago Style
Principal, Victoria. "I grew up thinking that whatever I wanted to do, I could do." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-grew-up-thinking-that-whatever-i-wanted-to-do-i-66195/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I grew up thinking that whatever I wanted to do, I could do." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-grew-up-thinking-that-whatever-i-wanted-to-do-i-66195/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.




