Madeline Zima Quotes

As an actor, the toughest thing is being subject to circumstance. Meaning: What scripts are out there that are available?

I just go from one movie to the next and try not to get fired.

After the 'Golden Compass,' I wasn't sure if I'd ever get another acting job.

I don't know what it's like to be an actor, where if your show gets canceled, really you're just a bum.

Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

Even the greatest actors have had dry spells where they've wondered if they were going to work again.

When I emerged from drama school, I had no expectation that I would ever work in film.

The life of an actor is very random. It can be exhilarating but terrifying - you do wonder day to day where the next job will come from. Some of my friends are very talented people, but you see them out of work - which can be tough. If you wanted that kind of security, though, I guess you wouldn't be an actor in the first place.

Well, I'll keep on auditioning and one day maybe I'll go to LA and try out for films there.

Before 'Mad Men,' I definitely had very dry spells and I know what those feel like, and I don't think that ever leaves you as an actor.

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.

I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do, but there's a lot going on out there. There are a lot fewer films being made, and there's a lot of competition.

With acting, I always felt like I didn't have control of it. It was all about other people giving me a job.

There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

I never thought I had a career. I think Meryl Streep has a career. I have jobs that I am lucky to get... I'm one of those actresses who never turns down a part, no matter how small. I don't have the luxury of picking and choosing. I take everything.

In 'D.A.R.Y.L.' there was a part where I had to freeze to death, and they didn't even use it. It can get kind of frustrating. But I don't regret that I decided to become an actor. Besides, if I don't like it at any time, I can stop.

I want to do movies, television and theater. Whatever comes along.

I don't speculate too much about the future. That's the thing about this job - it's so fickle. You take the jobs, you read the scripts and, if something interests you and you like the people who are working on it, you go for it.

I think the hardest thing about being an actor is between jobs when you don't know and wondering if you'll ever work again. It's kind of a crazy business.

For years after 'The Last Waltz,' I got all kinds of silly movie offers - or, maybe, not silly, but parts that are not my calling... lots of offers to play some wonderful boyfriend.

I won't say I've closed the door on acting.

Sure, I'd love to be on primetime, but if I'm blessed enough to be picked up by another soap, thank God! It's so hard out there. And when you're not working, you feel horrible. You don't know when you'll get the next job. You don't know how long the soap genre will be around. I want to help keep these shows on the air and keep everybody working!

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?'

Maybe it's because I've been an actor for such a long time, but I think, unless you're a big star, you don't really have much control over anything. I've never been able to make any plans.

I've done almost 20 films and I still worry about not finding the next one.