Industry Harshness Quotes

I'm grateful that I have a theater career because television isn't kind to you when you're over forty.

Hollywood sucks. I've got the bruises to prove it.

If you are in the job for glamour, you're in for the shock of your life. The media is a huge shark pool.

The music industry is a very rough industry. Many years ago, I think it was even rougher in the sense that a lot of it was predicated on image.

I find it really frustrating when people go, "I want to be famous and glamorous like you." It's hard for me not to have a bad thought when someone says that to me, since if there's anything this business is not, is glamorous. It's only glamorous for maybe five minutes every now and then.

I always tell new people in show business. I say, "Look, show business pays you a lot of money, because eventually you're gonna get screwed. And when you get screwed, you will have this pile of money off to the side already." And they go, "OK, OK. OK, you ready? You ready?" "I got screwed." "You got the pile of money?" "Yeah, I'm fine." I mean, that's the way it works.

After a hit show is over, you soon realize this is a very tough business ... brutally tough. But I'm a better actor and I have more gravitas than I had at 24 with bleached-blonde hair.

In a way, I don't want to know what's being said in casting offices, because it can get pretty brutal, and I don't want to have to think about the reasons why I don't get one job or do get one job.

Acting can be a very cruel mistress. It's not a meritocracy. In other walks of life, by being good at what you do, you can achieve success. That isn't always the case in this business. Every actor knows that.

I have learned from my mistakes... the business we are in is cutthroat. I have seen too many older blokes give their all for clubs, then be told they are not wanted. Even blokes still on contract are told to look elsewhere.

There's nothing worse than Hollywood when you're on the way down. It has a way of telling you, 'Mamie, get out. You've had it.'

Most actors don't understand acting. I think it's an art form that craft is out the window. I don't think people get it at all, most of the time. Or they get some of it, not all of it. If you get an Academy Award nomination, you think 95 percent of the profession is unemployed at any given time, most people will never even find work as an actor, and the ones who do will probably make $50,000 a year at the most if they're lucky. Some will never do Broadway. Some will never do a major role. And a really, really, really small percentage of them maybe will be nominated for a major award.

I went to drama school and it didn't prepare me for the ruthlessness of the industry at all, or the reality of it.