Denis Leary Quotes

Normally when people ask me what I do I say I'm an actor, and that's what I always wanted to be and that's the way I approach work even when I'm directing it.

Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it.

I always made a living as an actor when I came to California. I never had to do anything else.

I may be a B-movie star, but I work. I'm an actor.

As an actor, you're always reading scripts looking for something good.

I think it would be amazing to be a character actor and still be a lead now and then in movies.

My father is an actor, so he brought me into his agency when I was young. It wasn't something I wanted to do until high school, when I started taking theater and really liked it. Then an agent found me and wanted me to come out to Los Angeles and give it a shot. I gave myself six months, but it only took me like a week to get a job.

I was working in Chicago, in theater and in commercials and anything that anybody would let me do. When I moved to L.A., I had made a choice to be a character actor, meaning that I wanted to become somebody else. That's what attracted me to becoming an actor in the first place.

One day I was in school, and the next I was acting opposite Jeremy Irons. That's how quickly it happened. I was in class and then working with Sir Anthony Hopkins.

Guys like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sam Rockwell are the guys I look up to and have the kind of career I'd like to emulate.

I did plays and movies and whatever all over the place.

The only thing that I could think of to do was to be an actress.

There are a lot of weenie American actors, and a lot of foreign actors are having the luck.

I couldn't imagine trying anything else besides acting. But I didn't know that to make it meant I'd be on a movie screen.

Everyone's amazed by the question that how did I succeed as an actor in the industry, which has Kamal Haasan? It's because I grew as an actor watching Kamal's acting.

I love acting. I had a backup option in writing or direction. But I have gone on to become an actor.

I want to be a star who acts as well.

As a child, I always wanted to be an actor. But as I grew older, the acting dream kind of faded away, and I took to studying a lot. A few years later, a relative of mine who really wanted me to try my hand at acting sent my photographs to a few production houses, and like they say, the rest is history.

I want to be an actor.

I just wanted to be a working character actor.

Really good leading roles are few and far between, and there is so much competition because there are so many fantastic actresses in this country.

Given that Chiru also comes from a family which is closely associated with the film industry, I know I will get more support from them to pursue my acting career. I won't stop acting. As long as we live, we will continue to act in films.

Being a movie star is a quality that somebody sort of embodies, and being a celebrity is something that people give to you. It has to do with being recognizable, as opposed to something that people recognize in you. I just hope to make good movies. I know that sounds simple, but it's true.

You'd be surprised how much being a good actor pays off.

I call myself a character actor all my life. I've done a certain amount as a leading man, but character actors in my estimation - it's a lost art these days.