Aging & Wisdom Quote by Victor Garber

There is something quietly radical in how ordinary Garber makes ambition sound. "I think" softens the claim, and "from a very young age" turns what could be read as ego into biography: this wasn’t a strategic choice, it was a preexisting condition. The line doesn’t sell performance as fame-chasing or even as craft; it frames it as desire, a bodily pull that predates self-consciousness. That’s actor-talk in its purest form: vocation as appetite.

The phrasing matters. "Always have this desire" is slightly ungrammatical, like the thought is arriving in real time, which lends it authenticity. He’s not delivering a polished origin myth; he’s giving you the sentence someone uses when they’ve repeated the story enough to believe it, but not enough to turn it into brand copy. For a performer with Garber’s career - theater roots, Broadway credibility, and a long run as a reliable character actor in film and TV - the subtext is also defensive. Character actors rarely get to claim the lightning-bolt narrative of stardom. Instead, they justify the grind by locating the motive somewhere pure and early, before agents and auditions and typecasting.

Culturally, it’s a familiar script: the entertainment industry loves a childhood calling because it sanitizes ambition. Wanting attention is suspect; wanting to "perform" sounds noble, almost altruistic, as if the self disappears into the act. Garber’s sentence plays that game while still hinting at the truth underneath: performance isn’t just what he does. It’s how he learned to be.