Michael Ian Black Quotes

Although just being employed as an actor is a big thing, I'm not sure I'd be satisfied playing the same character for 30 years; it's not why I want to do this for a living.

As an actor, you just want to continue to work on things that you like. You can be in this business a long time and consistently working and just be totally artistically unfulfilled.

I love acting, but being an actor for hire only serves so much, and then you want to fill your well up again and be charged by something else.

When I said I no longer wanted to be a painter, that I wanted to be an actor, the first thing I did was get a stinking job in an insurance building.

Movie acting is a great job for your twenties: You travel all over, you have affairs with people, and you throw yourself into one part and then another. It gets more challenging as you get older, and it's not just having a daughter, it's wanting to have your own life and be yourself.

I was living in London and I thought, 'There's nothing here for me anymore.' I don't want to become this actor who's going to be doing this occasional good work in the theater and then ever diminishing bad television. I thought I'd rather do bad movies than bad television because you get more money for it.

I was working in customer service and had a verbally abusive boss. One day, I decided to quit and pursue my acting passion with everything I had. One week after quitting, I booked 'One Life to Live.'

I've been doing my job for a long time and I never really thought about being an actress or being anything like that. I was always a bit scared as well because of the thing about models becoming an actress and all that. I just never really took it seriously.

I've been lucky - I've been an actor for eight years and I've never been out of work.

After eight years on 'Young and the Restless' and eight years on 'Criminal Minds,' I'm ready for that next phase of my career.

I see myself at a certain age as not being able to play the kind of parts that would keep me stimulated, and I can't imagine my life ending professionally the moment that I've got to go to the plastic surgeon and have my face rearranged.

I don't see myself acting for the rest of my life.

I've been very lucky to work with great filmmakers. But I think my days of just freely acting regularly, that being my sole creative fulfillment, are gone.

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 think something that every actor wants, whether they've done four movies or forty movies, is they want to find the work interesting. You want to come to work and think this is going to be a challenge.

I quit 'Jhalak' for 'Balika Vadhu.' I suffered from dengue; I was in ICU for three days, and then I quit 'Balika Vadhu.' I needed a change and wanted to experience new things.

I came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys. But I've been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.

I just want to keep working, really. I just want to keep acting. Playing one part for a very long time builds up in you a desire to play as many different things as you can.

I love what I do, and when I don't love what I do, I'll make a change...I can't be the candy queen forever.

There's not a rocket scientist, not a doctor, not an accountant that 30 years in goes, "Oh, now I'm getting it. Now I can't wait to get back out there because I'm better than ever."

As a young actor, there's a very small group of kids, just a handful. As you get older, all of a sudden, there's a bunch of guys your age that work. It's a very different experience when you used to be on the short list because you were young and there's only so many kids that can do the work and then all of a sudden you're in your twenties and thirties and there's a whole bunch of guys that can do your work.

When you're doing a movie, you're in and out of there in three months. If you hated the experience, it's all good because you can take the paycheck and leave. But, on a television show, you have to love your character and you have to love the experience because you could be there for awhile, fingers crossed.

My father went to college for drama in Pittsburgh, and so did my mother, and then my mother was a steadily working New York theater actress. They kind of quit when I was born. They did that for, like, 10 years before they had kids and then I was born and they were not into that lifestyle for kids.

I'm really enjoying being an actor right now, at this point in my life. It's a great job, it's a huge responsibility, and I just want to do it more.

I bet I'm the only person in history who went from being the star of a sitcom to the host of a public-access show in less than a year.