Sean Penn Quotes

My son tried to work in films and he ultimately gave it up, he finally couldn't make a living, he couldn't support himself. He worked all the time and he didn't make enough money to have a house, have an apartment.

I still have to work paycheck to paycheck. Being in show business doesn't indicate that you're a 'success,' in my opinion.

Most actors I'm in touch with are struggling financially.

I'm an actor and a playwright, and I don't earn much.

I need the money. People don't understand how little money you make in a band.

I do smaller films, I'm not getting big paydays. I feel like we're just kind of scraping together here.

I know actors who have had to turn down good roles because they just don't pay enough. It's hard.

Nobody wants to sit where I'm sitting and say, 'Hey, this is the reality. I did two movies, six guest-star spots and I starred in a one-woman show, and I'm not making any money. I'm on TV every day in every country in the world, and I don't make any money.'

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.

My father has been an actor since 1964. Things were tight a lot of the times, financially. It wasn't like a big romantic adventure.

As an actor, the ambition is to play interesting characters. And in the indie genre world, the budgets are low. That allows me, as an actor, not to have a financial value behind my name, to justify me being in these bigger parts for these types of movies.

To be famous and broke is hard.

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.

Most actors can't make any kind of living.

I got into a bad jag of movies that helped pay the rent and I thought would help further me along.

The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don't have bank accounts. They live from day to day.

I've got actor friends who didn't get breaks, who struggle and worry about things that I'm fortunate not to have to worry about.

I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession.

I spent a long time working in restaurants and making no money. It was very character-building, but I think it could have been built in a shorter time.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

If I didn't get a job, between 16 and 18, that wasn't significant, I was just going to go to college. I didn't want to be a struggling actor at 36 with five kids, doing something I hated. You see the story so much. It's such a vicious business to be in when you're not meant to be in it.

When I was focusing on theater, I would go on for months without any work and could hardly pay the rent.

I was an out-of-work actor for 10 years.

I did a few independent films, but there is no money in them.

There are schoolteachers around the country that work second jobs after their teaching duties are done: one woman in North Dakota I spoke to was heading off to clean houses after the final bell in order to pay her rent.