George Clooney Quotes

It's funny because when I got 'Jarhead' and 'Avatar' and all those movies, 'Leprechaun' still to this day airs on BET. I was thinking, 'Will they just let it go? I finally have a body of work that can speak much better to what I can do than just Leprechaun.'

Each time you do a film you gain a lot of experience and build a visual resume where people get to know who you are.

I'm never offered any sort of roles. I need to audition in a typically lengthy process to receive roles.

Five years is a long time to play one part.

You want a career. You don't want to do a couple of good films and then your career is over.

If you get your foot in the door doing one kind of part, that's the kind of role they call you for. I can't say I resent it - then I would resent my whole career.

I am now in a position to choose roles. I did not have so many offers before 'Queen,' but now things have changed a lot.

I started from B-grade films, and today I'm the number one actress of this country... whereas other actresses, whom you might call my contemporaries, they have had no growth in whatever platform they were launched... they are still there and have not risen to another platform.

I am getting better offers since directors feel that I am versatile and can be more than just a girl next door. I am also seriously trying not to be repetitive.

After being an actor, producing 'One By Two' was a natural progression.

My only intention is to just have a little bit more success so that my career is easier and I don't have to work so hard just to get a job.

Usually being a young actor, you've got to go through certain levels of hierarchy, going through bit parts and extra roles and then kind of progressing up the food chain and having the size of your roles grow in that sense.

Once your acting job is over, you just hope they have a good editor and they put together a good film.

At some point you realize, I have dreams. I would love to be working on wonderful roles, in wonderful films, with people I respect and admire. And that will come in its time. In the meantime, "Pay attention to your work. Get better at what you do." That's my job.

I know I haven't done it. I've done a couple of films, which were intended to go straight up. Thankfully they didn't. So now, I think that's what I need to do. I just need to grow as an actor.

I came out to Los Angeles for a couple of meetings in the summer of 2005, and I ended up getting a movie called Firehouse Dog for Fox. And I thought, "Oh, man. I'm doing a movie. Maybe I'll work a lot more now. I'm an actor now." Then, for eight, nine months I didn't work after that. After that movie, I began to get some guest star roles, fairly consistently, but because I had been so presumptuous before in thinking that the other jobs would lead to something, I realized: "Just get up. Go to work. Go home. This is your job just like everyone else's job."

Up or out" greatly magnified the careerist emphasis on holding a position rather than doing a job.

I think that it's a myth that there's one job that makes your whole career, unless you're winning an Oscar. But even that doesn't work for some people.

Time moves on but Barbara Hershey's doing good and John Heard, they're all people working. I know there were a couple of kids in that movie who I used who have been in other movies since Beaches.

I don't want to make a habit of just playing small roles, because I really enjoy the process of being part of a film and staying on it for the length of time that everybody else is as well.

I didn't tell anybody [had got a role at As Good As It Gets], because I was just going, "Well, that was the strangest audition..." And I just thought, "There's no way he gave me the job on the spot when there was a room full of other girls waiting to audition for it." But then I didn't hear anything for a couple of days, so I finally called my agents, and they're, like, "Oh, yeah, congratulations! We know Jim [L.Brooks] told you in the room that you got it."

It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job.

You have to start at the very bottom and you've got to do every job. I did that so I could understand what everybody does. I didn't become this huge producer overnight. It took many, many years.

A job is not a career. I think I started out with a job. It turned into a career and changed my life.

For the only time in my career, I came in and met Tony [Richardson] for the part - I did not read, I just met with him - and in the middle of the meeting, he told me that I had the part [in The Hotel New Hampshire]. There was never, "Well, thank you, and we'll have my people call your people." There was none of that kabuki that goes on now endlessly for even the smallest role.