James Badge Dale Quotes

Being on stage is a seductive lifestyle. My advice to aspiring actors is think twice. People sometimes go into acting for the wrong reasons - as a shortcut to fame and fortune. If these goals are not attained, they feel a bitter disappointment.

The life of an actor is very hard irrespective of the continent you are in. It is doubly hard when you are only eligible for minority roles.

You'd think that my acting in 'Lost Angels' would have been the reason why I gave up on it. But yeah, I'm just not that good at it. Auditioning is super weird, and I'm bad at it.

I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

I have friends that are much better actors than I am that had to quit the business because they couldn't survive the auditions or the rejections, or people just didn't realize how good they were.

As an actor, I felt I couldn't compete. I wasn't as cute as the leading man; I wasn't as brilliant as Robin Williams.

Since I also act, sometimes I get over my resentment and commit to the pitch as an acting job.

I'm not in a position where I get to pick and choose roles. I usually go on auditions in long lines and embarrass myself in front of casting directors, and with a lump in my throat and my ears burning, I walk past reception and smirking actors as I go to the parking garage and go back on the highway.

I don't see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you're not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it's not like something you can win in that way.

People were confused by me, and at first I was auditioning a lot for the crazy characters or the victim, someone who'd been attacked. Which is great, because usually those are the best acting roles.

While I feel that I have a great reservoir to draw from as an actor for lots of different roles, it is difficult because it can be an industry where it's people's jobs to thin-slice you really quickly and try to fit you into a niche in the market.

I think all actors experience ups and downs.

I'm not good at Disney acting. I'm really not. I never was on that audition list, which I don't mind. I don't know. I look back, and I'm kind of wiping my forehead at the thought of, 'What if I had gone that route?'

But so much of being an actor isn't so great - the auditioning, the rejection, the financial insecurity.

I love actors. I'm empathetic to them. I understand what they go through. But I didn't want to be an actor.

What's comforting about coming from a family of actors is I don't have to explain the struggle. I can just sigh to my sister, 'I had a bad one,' and she'll know exactly the profound audition humiliation I am describing.

I think 99 percent of actors have gone through severe rejection before they ever landed a single role. I probably auditioned for 100 projects before I was cast in even the smallest role.

I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.

There were years in between of going to auditions pretty much every day and getting nothing.

The stressful thing about being an actor is, like, you have to kind of audition again and again and again, you know? You go in one time, and you go in again for a director and then again for producers and then again and again and again.

There's a process: you audition, you get rejected, occasionally you get jobs, and it's exciting, but it's all little stepping stones.

I sure don't miss going out on auditions!

I know how difficult it is for actors to get work, because I did casting for all those years.

There's certainly harder things in the world and the country to do than being an actor, but it's a particularly emotionally humiliating thing to do, that you don't really anticipate when you choose to do it. You don't really think that it's going to be quite so soul-crushing at times.

I've been an actor for 20 years, and I think the first 14 years, it was all struggling. At first, it was all gangsters.