Michelle Pfeiffer Quotes

There's no way that anyone can know the ebb and flow of one's career. You can't know that. You can tell young actors it's going to be very difficult, but there's no way you can understand the difficulties and the rewards through description. You have to cellularly experience it.

Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.

I'm sure it's not great fun for them, or for any parent, when their child says they want to be an actor, 'cos it's quite an uncertain business and it can be terribly hard for most actors.

Even the greatest actors have had dry spells where they've wondered if they were going to work again.

People told me, when I was coming through the ranks, that a mark of a great actor is one who deals with the period of unemployment as well as they deal with the period of employment.

You feel an affinity with younger actors, because, you know, it's a very insecure job. And it can be a long time before you feel like, you know, things might be all right.

I think it helps, as an actor, to never know when you're going to get that next script and you're done.

Those three years on 'Loving' were instrumental in helping me move through the next few years of work, where it was hit or miss. I was on series that would get canceled, then I would be a movie that wouldn't come out or do as well as I hoped. You learn that you have to just keep plugging away and never take anything for granted.

I don't know if I will be acting all my life, honestly.

I think a reason why actors get reputations for being crazy and neurotic is because your life task is constantly in flux.

I've always thought one of the tricks of being an actor for a long time is keeping yourself interested once you've figured out how to pay the rent.

I haven't ever really been close to retiring. I've threatened myself, that kind of thing. There were moments where I'm struggling or not healthy: It's like, OK, is this the best way I can spend my 20s? Is this something that's going to help me in the future, or I might as well be fishing or gaming.

If there's any actor who is saying we are not insecure, they are lying, because this job is an emotional one.

You're going to have some ups and downs, so you have to prepare yourself to be ready. Those down moments come.

Everyone has ups and downs. You can't always get exciting roles.

I won't say I'll never go back to a soap because an actor's life is so precarious. You can have the most wonderful patch where everyone wants to work with you, and in the blink of an eye the phone won't ring for a month, even a year.

As an actor, you always feel like you're not going to work again. You're always unsure about how things are going to work out, and you start thinking you're going to just fade off into the distance.

Sometimes you feel fine. You might have a day when you feel awful about what's going to happen in the game. It ebbs and flows. Just embrace it.

You always kind of feel like you're rolling the dice as an actor.

What's frustrating as an actor, when you want to work hard, you can only work once that phone rings and then you can only work until the production wraps. Then you have to find another job.

I think I made the wrong career choice

Early rejections are really tough, especially when all of your friends who you went to school with now have legitimate jobs, are getting married, having children, buying real estate, being adults. And you're still trying to figure out how to make a living doing the thing you think you love, but you're not even sure yet because you haven't even done it. It was a long road of risk and treachery.

What do you do when you don't know what to do? No wonder there are more suicides among psychiatrists than in any other profession.

The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.

I just kind of muddled through in my 20s. I did whatever I got offered, to be honest, to pay the bills. I didn't really know what I was doing. There are some actors in their 20s who are very sure. I wasn't very sure what I was doing. I feel like I've only really just got going.