Damian Lewis Quotes

I'd like to think that I have a plan, but you can't really pick what scripts you're going to get or what movie is going to come along.

Every job in Hollywood is a risk. You don't know, when you sign a contract, if something is going to pop, you don't know whether this or that network is going to support your show. You just show up and do the best work you can do, gravitate towards the best material, you know, and try to make the right choices. And the rest of it is a roll of the dice.

Let's face it, making movies is all risk. Most of the time, batting average-wise, the reward does not outweigh the risk.

I understand it all. I can write my own ticket for one or two movies. But if they're not the right ones, my ticket gets yanked. I understand that's how it works, and I'm okay with it.

Making pictures, for an actress, is like betting, for a gambler. Each time you make a picture you try to analyze why you won or lost.

It's very rare when we are in control of everything. Sure, I can learn my lines, I can know my character really well, but there are so many factors going on throughout the day.

It's self-destructive to become confident regarding your own acting. Acting, your entire career depends on a lot of things. What kind of writing is working, the kind of filmmaking which is prevalent, all these factors in.

You always kind of feel like you're rolling the dice as an actor.

You can make five massive hits in a row and still not get cast by the directors you want to work with, doing little movies. There are no guarantees. I'm trying to sign up and do movies that I'll be proud of, if it's my last one. That's how I think about it.

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

Most actors don't know what they're going to do next, so you get into this thing where you have to force yourself to have another life outside of acting. And then, as soon as you start something in this sort of normal life that you're trying to live, you get a job. So you have this constant struggle because you want to be able to commit to things and to finish things in your life, but then you also want to be able to act.

With each game I play, with each season I play, I'm running out of chances. You're never guaranteed next year. You're never guaranteed the next game. You have to seize the opportunity when it's there in front of you.

That's one of the things of being an actor. You have to push any knowledge of any future, at all, out of your mind. You never know what's going to happen where.

In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we're trying to do. It's imperfect, but that's what it's all about.

So many things could go wrong, on any film. I've been out in L.A. for eight years and I've been acting professionally for a long time, and you realize that you have to prepare and work hard, but you never know what could go wrong.

I'm not a very methodologically pure actor. Almost every time that I start, I feel completely at sea. Always at the beginning I feel like a fraud, really, because I'm never sure how to get started.

Murphy Brown is doing better than I am. At least she knows she still has a job next year.

I never knew where I was going to end up when I started film. I didn't start film to be famous. Of course, it's a public medium, and of course we chose a public medium because we like people to pay attention to the work that we're doing. But I didn't know what I was going to end up.

I'm just looking to be in the best movies possible and do the best work possible and try to become a better actor and make better movies.

It's really easy to finish a movie and sort of immediately dive into the next one, because I love working with actors so much and being on set, my inclination is to try to get back to that as soon as possible. There's just never much of a gap.

but can everyone simply choose the path he loves? someone has to take the ordinary jobs. all i know is, that worked for me. and it didn't work for other people i know to get a so-called safe job, because there's no such thing anymore. the only thing that stays constant is the idea that people have to escape.

The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.

I have to make a living, and I have been in a few films I wish I hadn't been in, but I don't know where things will lead me next, and that's exciting.

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