Felicia Day :: Queen of the Geeks :: Paste Magazine Interview:
Day doesn’t do anything half-assed. When she took up violin, she practiced enough to earn a full scholarship to The University of Texas—at age 16. She majored in math, with no intentions of doing anything with the degree other than showing her dad, but she loved the coursework, graduating as valedictorian. “I was doing calculus at [age] 12, and it wasn’t like I was some kind of savant; I was interested in the subject and I had people to teach me as far as I could go.”
Day speaks quickly, as if her mind is racing, and her mouth is just doing the best to keep up. But while she excelled at math and violin, she didn’t love the predictability that came with either career path. So at age 20, she headed west to pursue acting. “I always had this blind idea that I was going to go to L.A. and be an actor, and it was unfounded in a lot of ways. But I think there are a lot of people who arrive in this town just thinking that’s what they want to do and that it’s their destiny—or righteousness or arrogance, of course. And then when you get here, you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s not going to be easy.’ But you know from Austin, Texas, a girl who did like two or three student films, I thought I was perfectly qualified.”
The Paste Magazine site is very cool.