I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.
In my early days, I was about 145 pounds. I was really a starving artist; the poster child for starving artists.
Yeah, I came over to Cambridge with 500 quid in my pocket and I had to borrow a waistcoat off another Australian player. I couldn't afford to buy one.
I haven't always had the money rolling in. I'm a character actor; it's not like I'm Gwyneth Paltrow - so I do have hard times still in my life. And that's even more why it's like you know what, I'm not that different from people going through it. I struggle; I look for a better deal at the grocery store.
I was an artist - I fancied myself an artist - I sold paintings at bars to pay my rent.
I do smaller films, I'm not getting big paydays. I feel like we're just kind of scraping together here.
I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.
I did just about anything to pay the rent for a while.
Financial hardships were rough on us, even though Mom had a good job at G.M.
Was I always going to be here? No I was not. I was going to be homeless at one time, a taxi driver, truck driver, or any kind of job that would get me a crust of bread. You never know what's going to happen.
I'm thankful that through my foundation I can provide much-needed supplies to children as they start school and some relief to parents who have a hard time making ends meet.
It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.
I can't dismiss my roots as a kid growing up during the Great Depression in the ordinary midwestern town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. From the standpoint of money and material possessions, we were barely scraping by.
Their life is about getting enough money to put food on the table to feed their children, and that's it.
My wife, Sharon, and I started with nothing when we got married. I was driving a 1902 Pinto and eating off a card table.
I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up.
In New York, ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with the hustle to survive.
If life is tough, at least you got that thing you can pawn.
My mom had to be resourceful. She grew up dirt poor in rural Louisiana.
I am still writing my own checks for more or less substantial amounts every week in order to squeeze by the weekend.
At the time Hull was serving as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee whose funds were minimal.
It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.
I never had a budget, I never had a manager, I never had a PR. I never had nothing. I was getting everything straight out the mud.
I went into acting because I had to make a good living. I had a child now and I had to support him any way I could... I wasn't happy, but I wasn't unhappy. I was just doing what I had to do to survive.
We lived near a supermarket, and whatever they threw away, we would get it, and my mother would make soup. Or she would get a big can of lard, a big can of meal, a big can of flour, a big can of beans, and fix the same meal for months.
It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow.