Early Life
Arnett was born in Toronto, the son of Edith Alexandra (née Palk) and Emerson James Arnett, who was a corporate lawyer and brewer, among other occupations.
In Toronto, he attended Francophone schools. He speaks French, but has stated that he is not currently fluent in the language. Arnett briefly attended Lakefield College School in Lakefield, Ontario, but was asked not to return after a semester for being a troublemaker. He then attended the Subway Academy II which allowed him to take theatre classes at the Tarragon Theatre, and eventually graduated from Leaside High School.
He attended Concordia University in Montreal for a semester, but dropped out. When he was a teenager, Arnett's mother encouraged him to pursue an acting career and he began to audition for commercials in Toronto. He decided that he really enjoyed acting and that it was something that he wanted to do with his life. Aged 20, in 1990, Arnett moved to New York City to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He began appearing in plays in New York and his first acting role was in the Felicity Huffman independent film Erie, which was filmed on the Erie Canal.
Read more about this topic: Will Arnett
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“We’ve only just begun to learn about the water and its secrets, just as we’ve only touched on outer space. We don’t entirely rule out the possibility that there might be some form of life on another planet. Then why not some entirely different form of life in a world we already know is inhabited by millions of living creatures?”
—Harry Essex (b. 1910)