Unemployed Actor Quotes

There was a period of time when I couldn't seem to get anything. I was on the series 'Daniel Boone,' and then, when that ended, I was still under 18, so I was too young to be in the older category and too old to be a child. So there was a few years there that were dry.

The biggest challenge to being an actor is, when you're not working, just being unemployed: the downtime and not having anything to do.

People go through times where you're not getting roles one after the other, and I definitely went through that.

My first paying gig was a play called 'The Voice of the Prairie' at a theater that no longer exists in Chicago called Wisdom Bridge. I played a fast-talking radio huckster - a salesman of crystal sets in the 1920s - and I actually won an award. Look at that! And then promptly didn't get hired for a year.

With acting, you have to depend on somebody else to decide if you are allowed to work. You can spend weeks and months when you are not acting at all.

I was an out-of-work actor for 10 years.

Acting in Los Angeles can be very isolating because you either have a job or you don't have a job - and if you don't have a job, it's all about getting out of your house. It sucks to sit around waiting. That's death.

That was a bizarre and unlikely event, which has misled a generation of drama students from my old drama school that dreams really do come true. I was an unemployed actor. I had been an actor for about eight years, and had worked in theater, and done a tiny bit of TV, and somehow an audition video of mine ended up on Kevin Costner's television screen, and he rang me up and invited me to fly first-class to Hollywood and be in his movie The Postman.

There's this misconception that I've been turning down roles. It's just not true. The reality is, there was nothing for me to do, nobody was calling, the phone wasn't ringing.

When you're on a series that's been cancelled, there's a little bit of a stink on you.

The normal state of an actor is unemployed.

There's a perception in the industry that if the actor is not working or has taken a timeout, he or she has left the film circuit.

I'll just put it this way: I've struggled enough as a working actor - and, most of the times, a not working actor - to know that anytime you are working is a blessing.

In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum.

The trouble with audition process is, when you're an unemployed actor, it's the only time you get to act, and it can be quite fun. If you feel in control of the material and you feel that the people are pleased to see you and are excited by you auditioning for them, it can be a really rewarding process. But it can also be a very humiliating process.

I don't think actors ever retire, they just stop being asked to work.

Acting can be a great job, but you do have to make up things to do when you're not working.