Parenting & Family Quote by Sheryl Lee

There is something deliciously sideways about an actor confessing she once wanted to be a nun: it’s both a casting pitch and a tiny personal myth, offered with a wink. Sheryl Lee frames the desire in two time zones. The adult “I would love to play” is professional hunger - a role as costume, discipline, and psychological architecture. The child’s “I used to want to be one” is a different kind of wanting: less about performance than about refuge, rules, and the romance of withdrawal.

The line works because it smuggles innocence into a career defined by being seen. Nuns represent a paradox that actors can’t resist: extreme visibility (instantly legible silhouette, loaded symbolism) paired with a vow of disappearance. To play a nun is to act devotion, restraint, ritual - big themes in a deceptively simple uniform. It’s also a socially acceptable way to talk about longing for structure without sounding self-helpish. “When I was a kid” softens it, making the impulse charming rather than confessional.

Culturally, it lands in a moment when Catholic iconography keeps cycling through prestige TV and art-horror - from severe convent dramas to “holy-but-unsettling” imagery. Lee’s quote taps that current, but keeps it human: the nun as childhood archetype, the actor as grown-up translator. Underneath, it’s a neat thesis on performance itself: some people chase the spotlight; others chase the peace that looks like the opposite, even if it still requires an audience.