The only child of a single mother, Matt LeBlanc grew up in a working-class neighborhood in a small Massachussetts town where everyone he knew worked blue-collar jobs. "The mentality was, if it was broke, you fixed it," he told The Telegraph in 2014. LeBlanc envisioned a similar path for himself. "I wanted to be a carpenter. Everyone did carpentry, plumbing, roofing in my family," he said. That's what he set out to do.
LeBlanc enrolled in a carpentry apprenticeship that got things rolling in that direction. "I built an entire kitchen from scratch and installed it in a house," he told The Times. The project remains high up on the list of accomplishments he's most proud of. "That kitchen's probably still standing. The thing was built like a brick s**thouse," he gushed. But the harsh northeastern weather made him question his choice. "I realized that I didn't want to be pounding nails in the snow in New England all my life," he told The Telegraph. His goal then became slightly different. "I wanted an inside job, where you got to work in the warm. That was the ambition."
While LeBlanc's carpentry days are way behind him, the lessons from the experience and his background have stayed with him throughout his Hollywood career. "I came from a very blue-collar family, and I see acting as a job. It will never consume me. It will never change who I am," he told The Times.
