David Harewood Quotes

When I realized that you can't necessarily be cast in a really great part living in Austin, even when Hollywood comes to town, I got a demo reel together and headed out west.

The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.

Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.

I went there and helped him shuffle pictures of people, and one of the agents asked me if I was interested in acting. Of course, I was a little bit interested in it; I'm sure that's part of the reason I moved to L.A. even though I never admitted it to myself.

If you're a young actor, unless you're on a very short list at the studios, we have to be very creative about moving your career along. Otherwise, all we can do is hope to get lucky and find that perfect role that pops you into stardom.

All my life, I struggled to get roles.

It's a tough journey as an actor in Los Angeles.

Trying to constantly get yourself into movies is extremely stressful and sometimes just impossible.

What I've learnt being an actor is that you've got to be lucky. I got less lucky, and nobody was interested. If a part came up, it would be for the main corpse's friend's brother who was having problems with his marriage.

In the early days, I just got lucky. I would audition for everything and just happen to land in something pretty respectable, like 'Freaks and Geeks,' my first job, which was a complete fluke.

I've just been lucky. I'd like to have more choices, and I'd like to have a leading part.

I did the whole struggling actor thing and lucked into being in the right place at the right time and getting involved in the first 'High School Musical.'

I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn't they? It's great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, 'I'm just gonna go to Hollywood!' is that it seems unrealistic.

I'd love to be on a TV series someday, but I believe you get the jobs that you're meant to get. If the job that I'm meant to get is another musical or another play or film or TV show, I'm just happy to keep working.

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.

Being an actor in L.A. is like being in prison: you go, you serve your time, you try to replicate Johnny Depp's career - and then you move to Paris.

After doing 'Doctor Who,' I'm open-minded to doing more acting. Part of the reason you do a show like this is because it creates other opportunities you haven't had before.

I want to carry a show, but there are not a lot of leading parts for people who are not celebrities.

I still audition a lot and work really hard to get work. So I don't really walk around feeling like I've made it. My short term goals are really just to be creatively stimulated and to be excited about material I might be working on.

When I first moved out to Los Angeles I was thinking, you know, I wanted to be an actor but I didn't really know what acting was about. I thought if I could be a model, or even do commercials and stuff like that for the rest of my life, I'd be happy.

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.

After 'Brothers & Sisters' ended, I was back to the old game as an actor. Doing pilot season, choosing a script and figuring out what I wanted to do.

I did tons of theater in school, and then when I was 16 and got my driver's license, I started driving to Los Angeles, along with my friend Eric Stoltz, who was a year ahead of me and was doing the same thing. So we had the same manager, and we started auditioning for things and doing commercials when we were 16.

I didn't pursue acting as a career until I got my first job. I didn't think I could make a living at it. You hear such horror stories about how hard it is to get work as an actor. It is hard, but I decided to roll with it.

When I graduated from college, I thought that I would probably never be an actor because it seemed like everyone was big by the time they were 20 or not at all.