Jean Smart Quotes

It was hard to make a living as an actor in New York if you did not do soap operas or commercials.

I haven't seen about half the movies I've done. You know, you've got to make a living, but some I don't get a good vibe with.

I have to stay in soaps to pay my bills to Kodak.

I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob.

I started off in a small theatre performance company and worked my way into commercials.

I went to Yale's drama school for theater, so we did tons of Shakespeare; then, I got out of school and said, 'OK, it will be Shakespeare,' and it was like, 'Or, it will be commercials and soaps.'

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.

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

My daughter's dabbling in showbiz, and she's done a few commercials. She's auditioned for some movies and shows, so I'm letting her pursue that. I'm OK with it.

I vowed I would never do a commercial, or a soap opera - both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving.

I landed about one a year. Just enough to make me question the gas money and all the driving in rush hour. When you audition for commercials, it's a lot of driving. What I netted wasn't exactly matching the hours I was putting in. I figured I'm not a face that makes people want to buy Lysol. Then I auditioned for Progressive.

I'm in the acting business. That's the ego business.

It used to just be a SAG card, and then you got an AFTRA card. I got my AFTRA card doing a commercial in Atlanta. I got my SAG card doing a beer commercial from 100 years ago; it was one of the first national commercials with a family in it that was black and normal, and I played the daughter.

I auditioned for soap operas and commercials; I remember auditioning for Lays potato chips. It was a sort of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' sketch, where Captain Bligh was torturing the crew by saying, 'You can only have one Lays potato chip,' and they all rise up.

One of the big struggles for an actor is sometimes you have to take work that you don't necessarily want to do so you can pay rent.

I had started in the comedy world in a more traditional way. I was auditioning for TV, film, and commercials while I was making these Web videos from my house.

There was a time when I never would have considered, ever, doing television commercials for records. I would never do that. That was something that you did for K-Mart.

Some of the movies I did - well, you have to feed your family.

I was a struggling actor all my life.

I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.

I'm making entertainment, but I'm making art. This is my art. Hopefully, it's profitable, hopefully it makes money, but at the end of the day I want it to be remembered for its artistic value as well as its entertainment value.

The movie industry has been contacting me. I have been auditioning - that's actually why I am in California. I was here meeting with studios and auditioning.

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

You do what you're supposed to do, but you have to be honest about what they're doing. When you do a comedy show on a network the problem is there are going to be a bunch of people who aren't comedians that are going to tell you what's funny.

Entertainment was transportation. You were supposed to take somebody out of their seat and bring them back in. You’re not supposed to impose your values or your supposed knowledge to manipulate or control people. That was not your job. You were not supposed to use the bully pulpit of Hollywood to pound people with ideas. You’re there to entertain.