Mickey Rooney Quotes

Getting fired was always a big deal to me. It's a bit like having someone break up with you.

I had achieved so much success in my career and then had this spectacular fall from grace that left me unemployed and living in a town, Los Angeles, that is built on envy. Once you fall, people don't really root for you to come back again. I'd go to restaurants where I always had the best table and half the time they wouldn't even let me pay. And then when I stopped making movies, the same places wouldn't even give me a lousy table, never mind the best one!

Before 'Grease 2', I was called the next Richard Gere, then after 'Grease 2', nobody would touch me.

Being an actor is mostly about rejection and being out of work. It was a fast lesson in all of that stuff.

After 'The Empire Strikes Back,' I got to make big films that I didn't care about, 'Never Say Never Again' and 'RoboCop 2,' and then I got too old.

In 1996, after 29 years as an artist for Marvel Comics, I got fired - 56 years old, two children still in college, and no job.

Being fired from a show - being fired in any way, in any instance, any business - is just hard.

I'm just a pack mule. I've played leads and I've played character roles. Any actress in Hollywood will tell you as your age climbs, the leads thin.

I didn't quit movies. They quit me.

No one ever wanted to hire me. Ever. I've never been recruited anywhere. I have beat my head against every wall, at every place that I worked.

I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless.

I did Star 80, which was a magnificent experience as well, but still, I was at the height of my career at the beginning. Then I had to jump down the ladder and climb back up again, which I didn't understand. That was very hard.

Sometimes I wish I could get fired.

I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you're wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness.

I got out of the business because I went from being the biggest artist on my record label to someone they didn't even want to have around.

In 1993 after giving a blockbuster 'Aankhen,' I had no work. I was sitting at home for a year.

The thing that amazes me about getting fired is that nobody ever has anything insightful to say about it. They always say the same thing. They always say, 'Everything happens for a reason.' As lame as that sounds, I guess it’s better to hear it out loud. Because when you hear it in your own head, it sounds like, 'Anything can happen with a razor.

So he was opening night... I was out of a job, and I'd been to every producer in Hollywood trying to get a job singing. But nobody wanted to know me.

I had a lot of frustrations about my career. A lot of, you know, times where I felt I should've been considered for a part that I wasn't considered for.

We have millions of unemployed and cannot afford any more immigration. Where are they supposed to live? It is not viable.

After the age of 30 in the movie profession, you're pretty well over as far as the casting people are concerned.

Assistance granted to the unemployed does not dispose of unemployment. It makes it easier for the unemployed to remain idle.

I wish it had been something as sexy as the old Joey Tribbiani, falling-down-an-elevator shaft. But no. It just faded out. I wasn't related to anybody or anybody's lost, amnesiac lovechild in One Life to Live. They just didn't have room for me, so it was a slow fade. I remember feeling the writing on the wall: "This is not going to end well for me."

It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp.

Just because you're unemployed doesn't mean you're not doing anything useful. You are, for example, at least keeping your mother-in-law's wit sharp.