Elizabeth Banks Quotes

There never were any roles for my kind of acting. That's the story of my life.

I studied acting in school and then, of course, couldn't get an acting job.

I've got a lot of silvers. Second seems to be something I end up being. I don't want to be the bridesmaid forever.

I'm in a position where I'm being continually knocked back for the kind of independent films I want to be in because people don't know who I am.

I haven't celebrated coming in No. 2 too many times.

If my British film career was a girl, then I'd been hanging around outside her apartment a little bit too long.

As actors, it's so hard to get your hopes up about anything.

Always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot!

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

As an actress, there were so many months, years even, when I didn't get work, when I wanted to quit.

When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them.

I auditioned for this agency. I got an advertisement first, and then something else, which I got fired from. It was soul-destroying. And then the next thing I got, I thought was going to be my big break, and they cut the role. It was only the year that I started auditioning for 'Star Wars' when I really started getting roles.

My first audition was for a commercial for the lottery. I didn't get it, so I hate the lottery.

I stopped courting Hollywood a long time ago.

The hardest thing as an actor is that you work really hard constantly for these roles, and you invest so much in it. And when they don't come to fruition and nobody sees them, there's a part of you that dies a little bit. It's like, 'Ah! But I worked so hard!' But that's the business.

If I had known how much I hate auditioning, I doubt I would have become an actress.

Films are tricky because for years you're getting told you're about to make it and you're about to be busy for four or six months or you're about to be on tour for press. But these things tend not to happen, and meanwhile you've said 'no' to many things 'cause you thought you were going to be busy, for years, for years this happens.

I've been telling people 'I'm going to go to California, and I'm going to be a big star' since the womb, but lately it was immediately followed by, 'Would you like soup or salad with that?'

You go up for hundreds, thousands of roles, and you get told no, no, no, so many times.

From the time I was 16 to really up until turning 21, the roles were really, really few and far between. I had people say that I just wasn't a good singer. They didn't know what to do with me; I would never fit in any markets. I almost quit acting altogether.

My first ten years in Hollywood were really tough. I'd be coaching friends who came to me for acting advice, and then they'd make it before I did. I'd still be helping them while they were on movie sets and I had four lines on a TV show.

I couldn't get an acting job to save my life when I moved to L.A.

I'm, like, the only actor in New York who's never, ever been on any 'Law & Order.' And I've auditioned for so many. The sad thing is I love 'Law & Order.' I'm really obsessed with it. And they always said to me, 'You seem like you're making fun of the material.'

Even the first suitcase-off-the-train moment, it's easy to be discouraged, frustrated, annoyed, angry. Because you're waiting in freezing weather outside of an open call, and you're like, 'This moment of me right now is not the joy I felt when I was doing J. Pierrepont Finch in 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying' in high school.'

I had done a few commercials here and there, but I was never super lucky in commercials.