Stephen Amell Quotes

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.

The 12 years that I was improvising are why I got the number of commercials I got when I was in New York and why I got 'The Devil Wears Prada,' and it's why I even got in the door for 'Mad Men.'

I always did TV commercials and made great money to put myself through school. That became guest starring roles on TV shows.

I can't even tell you how many different shows I would love to guest star on because there's just too many.

Before my big break in 'MADtv,' I was doing a lot of commercial work.

When you perform in your first film, it adds a lot to your career graph. The journey becomes easy.

Get yourself into every audition that you can. Even in those for smaller roles, you'll never know when someone may recommend you for a bigger one.

I got better as an actor, and still I'm getting better. That's only been possible because there's always been work.

It's bad enough that I'm an actress that wants to be recognized as an actress. Instead, I am known for doing game shows.

I've been very lucky. I wanted to be an actress, but I didn't really have the drive to sell myself. Fortunately I had a terrific agent in New York who kept me going from job to job.

It always surprised me that I was getting acting work.

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.

Pilot season can be maddening. You're basically putting yourself and your talent out there to be scrutinized several times a day for months by network executives who have probably never acted in anything since their junior high school production of 'The Wiz.'

If my kids decide to be actors and really, truly love it and are passionate about it, then I would definitely want to help them along their way, but it's a tough business.

I had been doing plays in New York and on a whim we packed up and moved West, I started doing commercials and plays and guest star spots on TV and one thing led to another and I got Knots Landing.

I'd go for parts that didn't pay a dime, and there would be 300 to 400 actors there. It could be very discouraging. To make it in this business, you have to have a kind of dumb sense that you're really good. You have to believe that someone is going to recognize that.

Seems to me that this business, for actors anyway, is not so much about whether or not you do good work. It's about whether or not you get the chance to do good work.

I've been an actor for 14 years now and a lot of that time was spent in theatre and television. Then I moved to L.A. to try and build upon that and it's starting to pay off!

When I was 8, my dad asked me if I wanted to audition, just for fun. I did just a little short film, and I liked it. I just kept doing it, and then I started getting bigger auditions for bigger roles.

I really always felt that I was going to be an actress. I had a lot of confidence in the fact that I would do well from a very early age. I didn't know how tough the business is.

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.

I've managed to catch lightning in a bottle a couple times. I'm very lucky. But I want to do this forever. I enjoy it so much. One of the challenges as an actor is to stay relevant.

I'm tryin' to get some acting credibility, get some other work.

The average actor might only be able to book six to eight guest star jobs a year - that would be high. So when you start doing the math, you can't live on that in Los Angeles.

It's not like you do 'SNL' and then get handed movie roles. You work, you audition for stuff and try to get it. I think, a lot of people, it's the goal to be in movies or just to be working in general. But yeah, some of us get lucky and get some movie roles, and it's nice.