Vic Tayback Quotes

I vowed I would never do a commercial, or a soap opera - both of which I did as soon as I left the Acting Company and was starving.

So the only things I was being allowed to audition for were small roles in comedies. It broke my heart. No one would see me for anything else. I knew, in order to open up my career, I had to leave or that's all I would ever be given.

People have this belief that actors are able to go out there and say, 'Oh I choose this job,' but most of the time we're just taking the job we can get. We don't just get offered thousands of jobs; we might earn one job a year and that's the one we'll take because we've got to pay the rent.

I still do commercial work as an actor, which I love, because it's very quick, and it definitely pays my bills.

I feel like I was in the last graduating class of commercial actors.

Paul Haggis, who's now a big movie guy, cast me as a lawyer in 'Family Law.' When that series ended, I thought that I would be going on more auditions and booking more jobs, but everything just came to a screeching halt.

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

I've seen the greatest actors in the world, transcendent talents, who can't find a home.

I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.

I've done 'The Love Boat' twice. I had a great time, but my ego rails against it.

I auditioned for 'Mad Men.' I auditioned for 'Top of the Lake.' I obviously auditioned for 'West Wing,' so I still get excited when I get offered stuff. Like, a part of me thinks, 'They think I can do it! That's awesome!' And that's a part of me I have to squash; otherwise, I would do everything just because people gave it to me.

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

I think actors worry too much about age. They should just get out there and make sure they're up for whatever jobs come along.

As an actor, you're just trying to get work in any medium. I remember when I started out, I did motion capture for video games, and then I did a terrible Best Buy commercial for Best Buy employees.

I'm much too egotistical to move outside the acting realm.

Happiness is egotistical.

I definitely want to go on acting for as long as I can find employment. I'm never happier than when I'm on a film set. I just want to keep working.

It's very hard to become an actor in film and television, you have to have such perseverance and you have to really believe that if you have any sort of talent at all, you will find work one day.

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.

I was so spoiled in a way. I worked very hard, but there was just a wealth of great roles.

In everything we do, the serpent ego is rising up.

Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge, but egoism of a different quality.

I'm not going to pursue it the way that actors pursue it which means going to all of the auditions and getting a job and all that stuff, because I don't really need to get a job because I have a job as a writer/director. That's how I make my living mostly now. So I don't need to make a living as an actress.

It's a moment that I will be asked about for the rest of my life as an actor, and I carry that moment with pride, that Rita [in Dexter] had such an impact and that it was such a gut-wrenching moment for audience members.