Unstable Career Path Quotes

The worst thing about being a freelance film director is that you're scrambling around Soho with a briefcase, looking for somewhere to make phone calls. That was my position for 10 years.

Most actors I'm in touch with are struggling financially.

I've always had to move between a couple of years of unemployment, where offers are not provocative enough to take, and seasons where I work nonstop for a year. It's always been an erratic rhythm.

I always say, even in this industry that I'm in - I'm on a show today, but the show could get cancelled.

We got sacked for the first time when we were just 18 and you realise that this whole industry is transient and changeable.

I do think that people outside the fashion industry imagine that being a model is what you might call quick, easy money, but it can be very lonely - you have to be quite tough. It's also very physically demanding.

As actors, we're all encouraged to feel that each job is the last job. They plant some little electrode in your head at an early stage and you think, 'Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful.'

Maybe it's because I've been an actor for such a long time, but I think, unless you're a big star, you don't really have much control over anything. I've never been able to make any plans.

From the outside, being an artist seems like a dream life, but there are much darker aspects to it.

It's not a very secure industry. I've spoken to a couple of people recently who had a successful TV show and then found themselves absolutely skint and struggling to find a job.

The entertainment industry isn't secure.

Films are tricky because for years you're getting told you're about to make it and you're about to be busy for four or six months or you're about to be on tour for press. But these things tend not to happen, and meanwhile you've said 'no' to many things 'cause you thought you were going to be busy, for years, for years this happens.

I've gone through long periods of time when there's no work for me. You wait for the next job to come along, and when it does, there's never a consideration about whether you do or don't do something.

All actors think every job will be their last.

I have career ADD, he says. I have career dissatisfaction. Even as a young kid, I'd have that. I'd get really passionate about something and then I'd realize, 'I don't want to do that!

That's the nature of the business. You can have a hit and then nothing happens all of a sudden. But I don't resent it. Hits don't make great artists.

In this business, if you lose, you're gonna get fired. Now, if you win, you still may get fired. That's the hard part. You see guys having success and getting fired. That's really tough to watch.