Jeffrey Dean Morgan Quotes

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

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.

It's not a very secure industry. I've spoken to a couple of people recently who had a successful TV show and then found themselves absolutely skint and struggling to find a job.

Many years ago, I really didn't know where the next work was coming from.

I was on 'Gilmore Girls' for seven years and had a couple decent years after that. Then, two years of almost nothing. I had jobs here and there, but I got very, very scared.

What's frustrating as an actor, when you want to work hard, you can only work once that phone rings and then you can only work until the production wraps. Then you have to find another job.

You'd be surprised how many writers, or how many actors, if they miss a paycheck or two, they've got nothing. As a writer or an actor you can have four or five jobs in one year and then have none for two years.

Whether it's New York or somewhere else, the metaphor of 'Avenue Q,' which is the place you live when you can't afford to live anywhere else - and we've all been through that in our journey. As I always say, at any moment I could be back on Avenue Q if I pick the wrong show.

I am just a journeyman actor. Most often I take what's offered me, and I've been able to work year after year. I was in 'Scarface.' Some people think this must have done me a world of good. Truth to tell, six months after 'Scarface' I had to take a job with a real estate development friend for a few months just to get by.

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

I've never been in jeopardy, but being an actor is a pretty shady place to be because you never know where your next job is.

It's either feast or famine, and that's the way it's been for as long as I can remember. I've spent my whole career thinking I'll never work again. Every actor lives with that insecurity. You just have to negotiate the rapids as they come.

I lived on couches for something like six months. I had no home. I was totally broke. I would stay at a friend's house for two weeks, then move because I didn't want to become this permanent mooch.

I'm sort of like a T. rex in the world of female actresses. Every time a job is finished, I look at my car and think, 'Could I live in it?'

I had been doing plays in New York and on a whim we packed up and moved West, I started doing commercials and plays and guest star spots on TV and one thing led to another and I got Knots Landing.

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.

There have been moments where I'm like, 'I don't know how I'm going to survive and pay next month's rent.' And the next month I'm filming a movie in New York City.

A lot of talented actors still have to pay their bills.

Nowadays, there's no such thing as a stable job.

Unless you have a long-running series, most actors just go job to job if you're lucky to keep working. You just do a movie or a play or a TV thing, and it's over at some point.

I'm very much a jobbing actor who's still trying to find a place to rent down the road.

Independent dance - and, fine, it's a very good thing that it remains independent - is a much tougher life: all dancers expect that, and accept that there will be periods of not being able to work, provided there are choice moments during the year when they really can work.

My dad was very much a struggling actor and spent more of his life as a postman, as a member of a tarmac firm, as a van driver.

I didn't have a huge amount of security when I was a scientist from one contract to another. You're always thinking, 'Am I going to have a job this time next year?'

I've always had to move between a couple of years of unemployment, where offers are not provocative enough to take, and seasons where I work nonstop for a year. It's always been an erratic rhythm.