Deirdre O'Kane Quotes

In the meantime, I just have to create those realistic goals about the fact that I don't have a ton of options as an actor who's been on a science fiction show for 8 years.

It can be tough as a jobbing actor.

I'm the most out-of-work actor I know. In the last two years I've basically taken meetings for a living.

I still have the actor's disease. I always think I'll never get another job.

I have all this time between projects, and I'm not so sure that's a healthy thing. It's scary, because at 36 I'm woefully unqualified for anything else.

Well, I was coming off of being on 'Law & Order,' and I was a little worried that it might be the end of my career - I've never been one of those actors with a lot of confidence that the next good job will come along.

I am not into publicity. I'm not good at it. I get anxiety about it.

I'm not just going to go back to my bedroom, get a job and 'get real with myself' - come on. I'm already too old, and I'm lucky to have a job at all.

I have no issue with being a character actor. If you've been around enough that people are able to segregate you into that category, it means you're working. So that's good!

You reach a point in your career when the weeks turn into a month or more of the phone not ringing.

I was aware that I was not getting the good acting roles because I was either too handsome, too pretty or whatever. I was being judged in ways that left me nowhere to go. You have to be patient.

I really need to work. People think that I'm no longer interested in acting and only interested in working with the animals. Obviously I have given that impression, but it is not how I feel. I think I'm a good actor. I think I look OK. I don't understand why I'm not working all the time.

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.

There is no way I could ever look somebody in the eye and say that I can make them feel good about the fact that they are losing their job.

Everybody that's an actor leaves it for a while 'cause they ain't got a job.

Jobless workers, especially those out of work for months and years, don't have the skills to multitask in a fast-paced economy where medical workers need to know electronic record-keeping, machinists need computer skills, and marketing managers can no longer delegate software duties.

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

I'd been auditioning for parts for years. I never got any better at it. I'm crap at auditions. I know there are people who can walk into those rooms and make those lines sing on the page and get the job immediately. I wasn't one of them. I'm still not one of them.

I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That's what I'm up against - I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren't written black.

As an actor, it easy to be so self-critical, saying to yourself, 'Am I good enough? Am I good looking enough? Am I smart enough?'

I never wanted to lose out on an acting job and wonder if I hadn't been trained enough.

Once I started working as a professional actor, it was like, 'Bye-bye waiting tables, bye-bye bartending, bye-bye all the cliched jobs actors do.' But after a year of not getting work, there's this really difficult conflict, like, 'Do I have to go back to being a waiter when people recognize me from a show?'

There was a moment there when it was getting really bad and everyone was being let go. I was, like, 'Can I get fired, please? Can I move on with my life?

So much of my job is about finding another job, and that's really boring.

When I finished my A-levels, I assumed I'd be able to get work as an actor. But I couldn't. I didn't get an audition. Nothing. So I thought I'd better train and then the parts would come.