Roger Allam Quotes

I used to visit one production house every day, and I used to take up auditions even for small roles. Before my debut, I must have auditioned at almost every single production house.

I was in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories in 1980. It was only a bit part and I didn't get to speak but I felt that I was in a real movie and heading where I had always wanted to be.

My first job was a film called 'Storm Damage' for the BBC. I was 16 and working with really respected British actors. I didn't have an agent at the time, and it kind of threw me into real acting.

Denzel Washington is a big Hollywood movie star now. But he started out as an actor in the Negro Ensemble company.

I was a dancer when I got discovered, and I started working immediately. I started being in commercials and doing guest star roles. My first big thing, which happened maybe six months after being discovered, was 'Bring It On: All or Nothing.'

I was a complete unknown when I did 'Karate Kid.' I'd just done a pilot for a TV show called 'Call to Glory.' And I sat down with John Avildsen and brought still pictures from the show. I brought pictures! At that point, I would've been happy to be in a dog-food commercial.

One of the first speaking roles I had was in a film called 'Svengali', with Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Ashley. I was a waiter, and I had about three lines. And I was ready! I had been around people like that, and I knew they were just actors. All the work I had done, it was all there, and I felt like I knew all the mechanics.

'Crush' was my first number one on the call sheet.

'Cuckoo's Nest' was my first film, and I had wanted to do film for some time, but somehow I had not clicked. I would go in for interviews or readings, and I never had the sense that I was anywhere near what they were looking for.

I was cast in a film toward the end of high school. Even then, I wasn't sure.

I think what happened to me was I was so lucky to have made 'Secretary' so young. It's unusual to be given an opportunity to express yourself as an actress that young and that thoroughly.

I started off in this dreadful, vulgar film called 'The Libertine.' I was just learning. I needed the money.

I didn't debut in a film playing a diva.

Once I won the roles in 'Spender' and 'First Knight' it was much easier for everyone, me included, to get their heads around the idea of me being an actor.

I only entered the industry when I was 16. I really didn't have much of a struggle to land myself a role in a film.

I think 'Happy Days' was huge and an unexpected high point of my career. I was a newcomer at that time, and I was fortunate to get such a role in the film. 'Paiyya' was another highpoint, as it opened up Kollywood for me.

I liked 'Brighton Beach Memoirs,' which I did with Neil Simon. I kind of was playing him, as Eugene Morris Jerome, and I played that a few times at the very beginning of my career.

My goal was always to get better roles, and in my case, performing on stage really led to great opportunities. My breakthrough came when I did Calder Willingham's 'End as a Man' on stage and was spotted by Max Arnow, who'd been the casting chief for Columbia.

'Cuckoo's Nest' came along, and I was cast, and that was great, but it was my first film, so I felt like I was kind of walking around on the set as Walk-On A.

'Heaven's Gate' I remember, because it was the first movie I ever was cast in.

After my debut in 2001 in 'Aks,' where I had a small part, I had to work really hard to get work in the industry. For almost three years, I had no work.

I did the plays in middle school. I was cast as a gate in my fourth grade play, and every year I got a bigger role. Then, in 7th grade, I played Smike in 'Nicholas Nickleby,' and the casting director saw me and asked me to audition for a movie. That movie led to me getting 'Moonrise Kingdom.'

If you go back and watch 'Saw,' I was very young. I'd never really done anything before.

I acted in my first film while in my second year of degree college, in 1978.

My university organised a casting call for a film and I won the role. I played a character who was dying of cancer. I remember in the middle of shooting going, 'Oh my God! Why did I decide to do this?' But people noticed me in it and I started getting invited to castings.