Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

I don't see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you're not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it's not like something you can win in that way.

I came from Texas, I was studying theater at NYU, and I thought for sure that my lot in life would be to get the best bartending job I could find and do theater in New York. And that was a good life.

I thought I was going to be a theater actor. I moved to New York after college and did some plays and worked a lot. Once the realities of living as a theatrical actor hit me, I realized I wanted to start making a little bit of money and not have to bartend and work in theater.

I spent a lot of time in the trenches in New York doing a lot of off-off-off Broadway theater.

I knew I wanted to be an actor, and I didn't necessarily need or want to be famous or a celebrity actor. But I wanted to be somewhere where there would be no ceiling on what I could accomplish, and I felt like if I stayed in St. Louis I might have a really great regional theater career or something, but that I wasn't going to be able to get much further than that. And it felt like New York and L.A. were the two places where you could end up being a TV star or you could end up doing regional theater, which would have been fine as well.

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 wanted to be a stage actress. I wanted to be a New York actress and have a community with other actors. I didn't want to get famous; I always thought getting famous was a drag on you.

I will become a more mature actor and it's one of my dreams to teach acting as well.

I definitely want to keep acting now. I've got all kinds of projects I want to do.

I had a lot of friends who dreamed of being actors, and as I hung out with them, I became more interested in it.

I always loved theater, growing up, and I was always like, 'Wow, it would be so fun to be an actor.' But my next thought was, like, 'I'm from Nowhere, Maine.' You know, no one's from Maine!

I never expected to be a movie star. It's not that I didn't want to be, I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an actor.

I certainly want to establish myself as an actor in my own right, rather than being just the actor who plays Harry Potter.

Everybody wants to be a series regular. It's something that a lot of actors would kill to have.

My father wanted to be an actor, dreamed about being an actor, but he gave it up because my mom and his family told him, "You're never going to make it; it's too tough out there."

It's important for me as an actor to be able to make a living.

I felt a certain modicum of success because I had been paid well to be an actor for the first time in my life, but I felt like I had done adolescent work on the show, and stepping into the New York theater arena was the first time I felt like I'd come into my own. I felt like I was proving myself in a gladiatorial arena.

Living in L.A., I was embarrassed to say that I wanted to be an actor.

To grow: that is your deepest and truest need when you say, 'I want to be an actor.'

I'm an actor - I want to be known for that.

I got a part opposite Edward G. Robinson in a play called Middle of The Night, which Paddy Cheyafsky had written. It played for a long time because everybody just loved Edward G. Robinson, everybody in New York wanted to see it. John and I were married at the time and put into a position where I was working very long evening hours and he was working in the daytime and so there was a lot of spare time.

I went to New York out of college, and in my day, we were told that was the way you became a good actor. You don't go to Hollywood, you go straight to New York and work in the theater. So that's what most of the people I knew did.

When I was younger, I didn't have any aspirations to be an actress.

Every kid's dream is to be a great actor.

I'm not interested in being a celebrity; I'm interested in being a better actor and a better director.