Wealth & Money Quote by Richard O'Brien

In an industry that trains people to treat every role like a rung on a ladder, Richard O'Brien’s line lands like a refusal to climb. “I’m not driven by money and I’m not driven by career” isn’t naive purity; it’s a deliberate reordering of values from the kind of actor best known for cult work, not conventional prestige. O’Brien made his name by writing and starring in The Rocky Horror Show, a piece that thrives on community, transgression, and joyfully DIY spectacle. In that light, the statement reads less like a personal mantra and more like a defense of an artistic ecosystem where success is measured in devotion, not awards.

The phrasing matters: he names the two forces everyone is supposed to admit privately but never renounce publicly. Money and career are the respectable drivers, the ones that make ambition sound like adulthood. By rejecting both, he frames himself as someone moved by play, curiosity, maybe identity - motivations that don’t fit neatly on a CV. There’s also a subtle jab at the transactional nature of show business: if you’re not driven by those currencies, you can’t be easily bought, managed, or shamed into “taking it seriously.”

It also functions as a preemptive explanation for a path that might look erratic from the outside. Cult artists often get asked why they didn’t “capitalize.” O’Brien’s answer is that the capital was never the point. The point was the weird little world he built - and the people who kept it alive.