Jamie Bamber Quotes

As an Asian American at pilot season you take whatever there is.

Before recording my 'Homeland' audition on my iPhone in my bedroom in Streatham, I hadn't worked or had an audition in the U.K. for nine months.

I never really acted at school. It was doing small parts on TV that really got me started.

It's so hard coming out of drama school to claim your right to be taken seriously and even get auditions.

I'm not in a rush to do anything. And I wouldn't say I pick and choose. When it comes to producers picking people for roles I don't think it's between me and Tom Cruise, do you know what I mean?

I think the reason they cast me as the good girls is because they couldn't find any in Hollywood.

As an actor, it's hard to get work. Sometimes you have to make do with the jobs that you get.

I, like almost every actor in the world, auditioned for 'Friends.' I wish I had gotten that one. I actually auditioned for Rachel and didn't go very far.

Any actress - goodness, we're lucky to be working. We all know that. There are few parts, a few good ones.

People get upset when I say most of the time serials are for those who are desperate for work.

Honestly, I had a very realistic, probably pessimistic outlook at the beginning of my career post-graduation of drama school. In general, I would see black women, usually older, playing a certain archetype on procedural shows. I thought, 'Okay, that's what I have to look forward to.'

I think it was in my second week that I auditioned for Battlestar. I was very "Oh gosh, I want to be in television, I want to be in something, but I don't know if I want to be in this."

I went to Los Angeles, because I have a manager, and - I can't remember when, but we met in London maybe six months or a year beforehand, and he said, "Listen, if you really want to get a job out of L.A., you really need to come." And I was like, "Well, can't I send a tape or something?" And he was like, "No, no, you need to come."

It's funny because when I first met with Carmen, she said, "Have you ever thought about doing TV?" And I was like, "No, not really, but I'd audition for TV." And she said, "That's where the roles are for women now. That's where you can go and get a really great part."

Actors already striving in the theatre wouldn't dream of putting themselves on these shows; it means that only about 10% of the talent out there is being auditioned for parts.

As an actor, you'll have ten parts in 2015 - eight of them will go to the other actors above you and two of them you might be close to, and you try to make them as good as you can.

I started taping my dad's auditions when I was 11, when he was auditioning actors for one of his movies. I would see, over and over again, that there wasn't just one actor for the role. It was really clear that there were a lot of people who could play a character really well, and it would always come down to something kind of weird and non-obvious as to why a person was cast. If you're not right, you're not right, but that's okay.

It's funny, 90 percent of what I've done has been television, and I never really wanted to do it that much. I was really interested in film and theater. What's ironic is that when I started doing television, I did a bunch of amazing shows all in a row, starting with The Corner.

I had interest in acting. I started as a drama major in college. I got to school and said, "What am I going to do with this?" But I didn't know anybody in the business, and it seemed like - I don't know. I had a teacher who said "Less than 1 percent of you will ever make a living being an actor." That was how we opened the semester.

My Dad always told me that casting agencies are like artists picturing their paintings in their mind. They know what they want for a role and not to take it too seriously [if I dont get the part].

One of the challenges you will face is finding a job in our depressed economy, ... In fact, the chances of finding a job are about as good as finding weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert -- slim and none, and slim just left the building.

From university, I tried to get into the profession almost immediately, and just got kind of kicked back in London, by lots of people saying, "Well, you know, we'll need to see you in something. And the easiest way for you to get seen in something is drama school. That is the best way to get an agent."

The problem isn't that the green jobs aren't sexy enough. It's that they're not plentiful enough. A young person looking for a job isn't looking just for a sexy job, they're looking for any job.

I don't pick the roles. Your agent gets a call for you and you go and they all get together, everybody has fun at the reading, and they say, "There's chemistry here." So that's how it happens.

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."