Beginner's Luck Quotes

When you work with filmmakers, and it's their first film, there's an exuberance and optimism, which is quite... There's no room for being jaded. Thinking that you know it all.

I've had really great experiences working with first-time directors. They come at filmmaking with fresh ideas. I've been very lucky that way.

The 'Damsels' crew was low-budget, young people who were doing their first thing almost. A lot of it. It felt like Pied Piper or Rumpelstiltskin or whatever: it was me and people thirty years younger or more. But it was great; it was really fun.

My first audition was an open call and I had no picture and no resume - that's how clueless I was. I just thought I could show up.

On my first TV job I didn't have a clue. They'd tell me to hit my mark and I had no idea what they meant. You just pick it up. And ultimately, all it's really about is pretending to be someone else.

I was very lucky. I left college, and Richard Eyre was in charge of the National Theatre. I was offered the lead in 'The Seagull' with no experience and went on to do five plays there.

But everyone has a chance. Every big guy started off small.

The beginning of my career was so brilliant. It wasn't until ten years later that I went, 'Oh, that was a big, fat fluke and, boy, was I ever lucky.'

We took the whole thing far too seriously. After all, those were early days in television.

I stumbled into tennis.

I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative.

I started playing bass in my friend's band for some reason. It was just something I did because, well, he asked me if I wanted to play bass and he played me this song - Nirvana's version of "Molly's Lips", the Vaselines song - and he said, "You can do this! This is not hard!" and it's like a two-note song. I learned that and then I thought I was a genius.

I found golf late in life, in 1990. I took some lessons and struggled. Then one day, I hit a drive that was so crisp and clean, with no vibration. There's no feeling like it. I was hooked.

Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.

I was very lucky when I started doing comedy because I hadn't seen much stand-up. I just got up on stage and did it without thinking.

I stumbled into this business, I didn't train for it. I yelled 'Action!' on my first two movies before the camera was turned on.

When you're starting out, every line in a show or a commercial is like a huge success.

I kind of take Hilary as a role model because she started out at about the same age. She hadn't done much before starting her series, and I haven't either.

You throw 40 times a game when you're first starting out, it's a crash course.

I had a visit from an artist friend who basically said, "Your paintings are wonderful. Now stop." It did resonate with me. It hit on the percolating need for change that was already there. I got a little push. I did a group of the paintings early on that were among the best. It was sort of beginner's luck with these.

We were so young when we started, quite naive and shy - we kind of knew what we were doing but didn't because we hadn't been stage schooled.

When I was starting out, I didn't know what the hell I was doing and my person who was helping me out, I didn't even have an agent, got me five or six big auditions for leads in movies in 1986 that I had no business auditioning for. I think I ran out of three of them before I'd even finished.

Sharpie? A mischievous smile spread across her face. I thought you said you couldn't control your powers. Beginner's luck.

On the song 'Dangerous,' it feels like a teenager picking up a new instrument and writing something with all of that naive excitement.

When I was beginning, a young actor could go from repertory company to repertory company. I did that and loved it. I was also lucky.