Mark Margolis Quotes

I think as working actors, it's like sales. You're only as good as your last sale, so you put your all into something and you just hope that from that you can get your next job.

Sure, I'd love to be on primetime, but if I'm blessed enough to be picked up by another soap, thank God! It's so hard out there. And when you're not working, you feel horrible. You don't know when you'll get the next job. You don't know how long the soap genre will be around. I want to help keep these shows on the air and keep everybody working!

An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.

People have this belief that actors are able to go out there and say, 'Oh I choose this job,' but most of the time we're just taking the job we can get. We don't just get offered thousands of jobs; we might earn one job a year and that's the one we'll take because we've got to pay the rent.

Thank God for television. I've been able to consistently work in television even when people say, 'Oh my God, I haven't seen you since this film or that project.' At least I'm working. It's very difficult to get that next movie role. I'm grateful to have the television world accept me.

Character actors have a long shelf life.

I know certainly, when one job draws to a close, that I feel I'm simply never going to work again. No one will ever want me for anything ever again. I think that's a vulnerable moment in every actor's life, and it happens every time you finish a film.

My parents are very proud of my success but still worry, as I'm in a profession where there is no guarantee of work. They have always supported my decision to go into acting, but there have been tough times work-wise.

I do love my work. As an actor, you live from job to job, though, and you have to be prepared for that.

I'd just got back from filming my role as Flo in 'Kidnap & Ransom' when I got the news that Channel 4 had re-commissioned 'Fresh Meat,' so I think it was the first Christmas I could actually relax knowing that I had three months' work sorted. As an actor, that's always a good feeling.

It's hard to make a living in this business. Unions aren't as strong as they used to be. For a journeyman actor - someone who doesn't have a famous name but has consistent work in theater or film or TV - it has become harder to get through, harder to raise a family.

If I only did theatre I would have had to waitress, and I didn't want to waitress.

A lot of the auditions in L.A. do feel like cattle calls, with hundreds of people. I started to lose sight of what I wanted, because you get so desperate for a job that you stop caring whether it's a good script. You're just pleased to be testing for something - but then if you get it, you're doing it for potentially six years, so it's a lottery.

All actors who have been around for a long time, which I have, and have been skint for long periods, which I have, find it difficult to turn down jobs. If I turn anything down my stomach turns over. I feel sick. It feels like gambling.

There's a cumulative effect to getting good parts as a freelance actor, because you're only as good as your last job, and you have to keep going out and getting them. Unless you're part of the finance structure, by which I mean a bankable star, which I never was and never will be.

There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

I am very fortunate to have a career. I always have to act. I don't know if I'll have a career to support it for the rest of my life, but I know I'll always act.

I just wanted to be a guy who could earn a living as an actor, and I did that for a long time.

I guess Johnny Depp has a pretty good career. I love a lot of parts that actors have played, so I love pieces of their career, but it's pretty hard to look at an actor's whole career and go, 'That was awesome!' Usually it either ends on a crappy show or with no work at all.

I've been working steadily as an actor since around 1998. I wasn't well known in the public, but I was a dependable working journeyman.

You want a career. You don't want to do a couple of good films and then your career is over.

I've done almost 20 films and I still worry about not finding the next one.

What career? A man's got a body of film of about four movies in about 10 years or something. I do it because I think I can do a good job of something and I'll enjoy it, do it, and sort of vanish. I don't want to be an actor for hire.

For an actor, to go to work every day is a really rare occurrence. You may work on a film for three months max, and then you're off, so you have to find another job and then work another three months.

I think it's an actor's job, if you can, to keep working and to keep using that muscle. First of all, you've got to pay the bills, but it also helps you develop.