John Corbett, star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and well know for his supporting role in Sex and the City, has recently admitted that he feels that going into acting was a mistake.
Corbett revealed that he regrets his chosen career path, and finds it unfulfilling. The revelations came during a recent appearance on the “Fly on the Wall” podcast hosted by Dana Carvey and David Spade. While the star has enjoyed great success and notability during his thirty years in the business, acting, he said, doesn’t make him happy. He’s more open about talking of such things because he’s now in the “fourth quarter” of the game both where show business and life are concerned.
He went on to explain that he has resented having his movements controlled since he was a child, but having each step and gesture done at another person’s behest is the nature of his work life, and it makes him feel like a puppet. He compared the experience to living in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Actors, he said, are instruments of directorial policy, not part of the creative process. Some actors, such as Emma Stone, get around the problem by being integral to the development process of the films they star in—Corbett said that he envied such people the opportunities to do that kind of creative work. He lamented that in his whole life, he hasn’t written one of his own lines or come up with one of the jokes that he delivered to the laughs of the audience.
Despite having good times with his co-workers, he said, the entire nature of his career involves waiting on other people in one way or another. Nothing in it—not his fame, not his co-workers, not the friends he’s made, not the people he’s entertained—quite make up for the fact that, for Corbett, his life has been desperately boring and unfulfilling.
