"Raised by wolves on oil rigs." That's how Niall Matter describes himself on his Twitter profile.
"I'm a third-generation oil rigger," he explained in an interview with My Devotional Thoughts. "My grandfather took me out to the rigs when I was seventeen. I was a little bit of a wild child, and my parents said, 'You either move out of the house or you go work on the rigs with your grandfather.'"
Doing this type of exhausting work while still in high school helped Matter figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
"I worked every single day for three months, like non-stop, and I missed the first little bit of my Grade 12 year because I was still on the rig," he told the Chicago Tribune. "And when I came back I was a completely different person and I knew then that I wanted to pursue film."
The ultimatum issued by Matter's parents clearly paid off. Newly motivated, Matter became an exemplary student who graduated high school with honors, and then he moved to Vancouver to study acting at Vancouver Film School.
