Mamie Van Doren Quotes

Before 'Whiplash,' I'd had a string of failed scripts. I'd pour my blood, sweat and tears into them, and no one would like them.

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

I have never been accepted. I'll never make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They're never going to let me in.

Not to sound too pessimistic, but I just don't see me having the film career that I maybe hoped for after 'The Birdcage.' I think people just didn't know what to do with me.

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.

Lost in a crowd of greats, not a single Oscar. That's showbiz.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

I assumed no one would ever listen to my music, and for quite a lot of years, I was right.

You have a lot of guys who've been given opportunities in the league. I'm not one of those guys.

So much luck! I'm not putting myself down, I'm not saying I don't have talent - I must have, to have got this far - but I honestly believe that some of the greatest actors in America are tending bar and waiting tables and driving taxis, and it will never happen for them.

A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it.

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 devoted myself to writing for years without representation or a promise of anything. And there were times when I felt quite down about my prospects.

I thought I had swell ideas, and wonderful musicians, but the hell of it, no one else did.

Here was a man with loads of talent, loads of ability, lots of love to give; but that had been stifled and aborted. I became very fond of that character.

My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.

All the other kids in ninth grade were drawing hot rods and cocker spaniels and getting blue ribbons in art class. I was getting rejection slips from the 'Saturday Evening Post.'

As I'm always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don't. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

My paternal grandfather was a failed novelist. He stacked boxes of rejected manuscripts in a closet.

It's still incredibly hard. Not just honing my craft but kicking down doors, getting my work published. Early on, I could have wallpapered my house with all the rejection letters sent my way. I put thousands of hours and pages into four novels that never saw the light of day.

It's the most extraordinary and saddest thing, the amount of talent out there not being seen.

I was in a movie called 'Before & After' with Meryl Streep. I was edited out of the movie, but no one told me. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. I sat across from her and asked her every question about acting. I completely embarrassed myself.

This is my greatest regret - that my music is not being played, and more people aren't seeing Chubby Checker. That's very painful for me. Many nights, I have tears in my eyes about that.

Actually, my career as a music director turned out to be a disappointment. I believed I gave good songs but the response and recognition from the industry was not great.

Like, even going to Duke Ellington School of the Arts, like, they slept on me. I think they thought I was talented, but for whatever reason, they didn't want to give me a lot of solos or any type of just love like that. But I don't know. I think that's what encouraged me to grind so hard.