"I started off in a small theatre performance company and worked my way into commercials"
About this Quote
Devon Sawa sketches a familiar ladder in the performing arts: start small, learn the craft where the stakes are intimate, and move toward venues with broader reach. The phrasing carries a quiet pride in earned momentum. Small theatre implies community-based rehearsals, repetition, and the discipline of showing up, listening, and sharing space. That environment builds instincts about timing, presence, and collaboration that no camera class can replicate. From there, commercials are less a sellout than a translation. They demand crisp on-camera technique, speed under pressure, and the ability to take precise direction while still keeping something alive and human in a few seconds of screen time.
For a Canadian actor coming of age in the 1990s, that path made particular sense. Commercial work provided visibility, union eligibility, and income, bridging the gap between local stages and film sets. Casting directors saw tapes. Reps took chances. Before breakout roles in films like Casper, Now and Then, and later Final Destination and Idle Hands, the pipeline often ran through 30-second stories about breakfast cereal or sneakers. The line suggests Sawa knows how unglamorous that grind can be, and how crucial. He is not claiming discovery; he is describing accumulation.
There is also a subtle ethic in the progression. Theatre teaches the care of process; commercials teach technical precision; together, they prepare an actor to endure. Sawa has maintained a career across shifting trends, pivoting into television projects and genre pieces with a veteran steadiness. The arc behind the words argues that craft grows in concentric circles: first the room, then the lens, then the larger narratives of film and TV. What sounds modest is a blueprint for sustainability. Start where you can be useful, learn what each arena demands, and let competence open the next door.
For a Canadian actor coming of age in the 1990s, that path made particular sense. Commercial work provided visibility, union eligibility, and income, bridging the gap between local stages and film sets. Casting directors saw tapes. Reps took chances. Before breakout roles in films like Casper, Now and Then, and later Final Destination and Idle Hands, the pipeline often ran through 30-second stories about breakfast cereal or sneakers. The line suggests Sawa knows how unglamorous that grind can be, and how crucial. He is not claiming discovery; he is describing accumulation.
There is also a subtle ethic in the progression. Theatre teaches the care of process; commercials teach technical precision; together, they prepare an actor to endure. Sawa has maintained a career across shifting trends, pivoting into television projects and genre pieces with a veteran steadiness. The arc behind the words argues that craft grows in concentric circles: first the room, then the lens, then the larger narratives of film and TV. What sounds modest is a blueprint for sustainability. Start where you can be useful, learn what each arena demands, and let competence open the next door.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
|---|
More Quotes by Devon
Add to List

