I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob.

Garner contrasts her early self-image as a serious stage actor with the pragmatic choices that pushed her toward screen work. The repetition of “always, always” underscores vocation: she imagined a life in theatre, not Hollywood. Yet financial precarity—being “so broke”—made television a necessity rather than a betrayal. Her admission of being “ashamed” and “such a snob” highlights a common hierarchy in acting culture that treats stage as purer than film/TV. The quote ultimately reframes her career path as contingent and human: ambition and identity collide with economics, and humility arrives through experience.