Bob Odenkirk Quotes

I'm not sure I'll find acting satisfying creatively forever. If you get the good roles, it's great - if you have the freedom to choose your projects and not just do anything and everything.

One of the things I enjoyed the most is just working as an actor.

It's such a fortunate life, if you can work as an actor.

But actors at a certain point take the best of what's available to them.

There's just a big group of actors in London. There are new ones coming in all the time, who are looking for work, and established actors who are interested in working and like to work. To be a working actor in England is a life.

I'd like to be a steadily working actor and to do as many things as possible. I'm really enjoying the life.

It's funny - sometimes people think we, as actors, have this wide range of choices of the roles we're doing, and in a lot of ways, when you're a younger actor, or just if you want to make a living in the business, you take your opportunities where they come.

I have no hesitation in taking up more acting assignments if good roles come.

The actor's life isn't for everyone, but it has been extremely rewarding to me.

I have never been of the opinion that I will only play the lead in a serial. For me, just the role needs to be good.

I've always been selective about my roles.

Most actors and actresses are performative as people. It goes part and parcel with the profession and New York actors who are out of work, or actors anywhere out of work, are manic because you never know when the next job is going to come.

If people offer me decent roles in good films, of course I'll take it. But I just didn't like the actor lifestyle. You end up focusing all your energy on trying to get parts you don't even want.

If you're successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you're unsuccessful it's worse than having a skin disease.

It isn't called TV money for nothing. There was a time where I paid my rent by doing theater for years, and I was able to buy groceries and pay my electric bill. I considered myself to be making a living as an actor. This kind of money that we make is a whole other level, of course. But it really is simply the cherry on top of a job and a role that I adore.

What's frustrating as an actor, when you want to work hard, you can only work once that phone rings and then you can only work until the production wraps. Then you have to find another job.

To be an actor you need four things: energy, concentration, a lot of luck and, of course, good roles.

I slowly came to realize that this job of being an actor, you spend most of your time looking for work. That is your job. Your job is auditioning. You spend very little of your time actually working.

I think we all understand disappointing yourself. Especially in the acting profession, which is probably similar to a political career, even the most stable, head-on-straight person is still going to be confronted with doing something that they shouldn't, that could affect their job or cause them not to be at their best - even if it's something as simple as taking a red eye for an audition at 6 a.m. the next morning and you know you'll be dragging.

My agent in London told me, after Never Let Me Go, because I loved doing that so much, "If you're on a lucky streak and you're doing well, you should only take a part, if you can't bear the idea of anyone else doing it." That's been the case since then, with Drive and Shame and the play (The Seagull), and the stuff that's going on, like Gatsby. I would have been devastated, if I hadn't gotten those jobs.

I think it's a real danger, as an actor, when you try to make some statement through your career about what the business should be doing or ultimately what your image should be or how you want to be perceived. I look at every project that comes along and say, "Is this something I can sink my teeth into and can do a good job on?" That's really how I choose roles.

There are far more good actors than there are jobs for them, so it's a big question of luck.

I've been on the stage my entire life as an actor.

Not only is acting more than a part-time job, it's more than a full-time job. It's a full-time obsession.

I stopped acting when I was about nineteen, twenty, when I got thrown out of college. I did act for about ten years. I don't know. I suspect I'm still a reasonably good actor, but I don't really know that I want to get on the stage again ... and having to say all those boring words by me over and over again ... I don't know if I want to do that. Also, I like a certain amount of freedom of movement, and if you're acting, you're stuck in one place for a long time. Having said that, I will probably be onstage next fall.