"When I came to Los Angeles, it was the first time that I ever felt like I belong somewhere. Not because it was wacky, but because people here understood what I felt like to perform, and there were other kids my age who wanted to do it. I didn't get looked at as God, you freak"
About this Quote
Los Angeles usually gets cast as a mirage factory, but Jennifer Love Hewitt flips the cliché: for a working kid performer, the fantasy isn’t fame, it’s normalcy. The line pivots on a quiet but pointed distinction: she didn’t feel she belonged because L.A. was “wacky” (the stereotype outsiders cling to), but because it had a shared language for ambition. That “understood what I felt like to perform” is less about applause than about being legible. In her telling, performance isn’t vanity; it’s temperament, almost a bodily need. And in a town built around that need, it stops reading as pathology.
The subtext is the loneliness of early talent. “Other kids my age who wanted to do it” hints at the weird social isolation of being the only one in your hometown who treats show business as a real horizon. It’s also a subtle defense against the suspicion that child actors are manufactured by parents or corrupted by the industry; she frames it as peer-driven desire, a community of fellow strivers.
Then she lands the punchline: “I didn’t get looked at as God, you freak.” The grammar is messy in a way that feels true to memory, and the insult does double duty. It captures how small towns can mythologize difference while punishing it, oscillating between pedestal and pitchfork. L.A., in this light, isn’t glamorous; it’s relieving. The city’s great promise is that it’s crowded enough to let you be unremarkable.
The subtext is the loneliness of early talent. “Other kids my age who wanted to do it” hints at the weird social isolation of being the only one in your hometown who treats show business as a real horizon. It’s also a subtle defense against the suspicion that child actors are manufactured by parents or corrupted by the industry; she frames it as peer-driven desire, a community of fellow strivers.
Then she lands the punchline: “I didn’t get looked at as God, you freak.” The grammar is messy in a way that feels true to memory, and the insult does double duty. It captures how small towns can mythologize difference while punishing it, oscillating between pedestal and pitchfork. L.A., in this light, isn’t glamorous; it’s relieving. The city’s great promise is that it’s crowded enough to let you be unremarkable.
Quote Details
| Topic | New Beginnings |
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