I've always worked in cinemas or cafes to make money because it turns out freelance journalism is quite hard to get into.
I come from a background where people have had their own business, where it has been incredibly tough for a long period of time, and you are only as good as the last contract you have got, as the last job you have done, where the notion of a precarious existence does exist, as it does for a lot of people.
It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.
I've moved laterally, as opposed to vertically. I was never a superstar. 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.
People always assume that, if you're an actor who's been on anything from which you're recognisable, that you're making all this money, and it's just not true.
Just because you're working does not mean you're making money. That's two very different things in show business.
I took a $40k pay cut to leave my technical copywriter job and work for $6k a year.
Ever since I started as an actress, just to catch up on some money, but not having an income for three years was tricky.
Most actors I'm in touch with are struggling financially.
As an actor, there's always that fear. You don't know where the next job's coming from, so you say, 'I'll do that, I'll do that, I'll do that'. Your choices are not always clearly thought out, and you can end up taking mis-steps.
I went from being a hustler, working different jobs to renting rooms off Craigslist, and I just wasn't happy.
I'm grateful I know what it's like to be unemployed for long periods of time.
My father has been an actor since 1964. Things were tight a lot of the times, financially. It wasn't like a big romantic adventure.
In today's gig economy, where jobs have been replaced by 'portfolios of projects,' most people find themselves doing more things less well for two-thirds of the money.
Just getting paid for six months out of the year is unacceptable in any kind of job.
I felt a failure because I couldn't sustain myself from what I earned from my writing. My day jobs were what mattered, and it was hard to even get those because universities wouldn't hire me as a real writer.
My son tried to work in films and he ultimately gave it up, he finally couldn't make a living, he couldn't support himself. He worked all the time and he didn't make enough money to have a house, have an apartment.
I was a happy man, never working. Sometimes I saw days with no money to eat. It was not so difficult.
I had a lot of survival jobs. One was for the Witty Ditty singing-telegram company. I was in the red-and-white stripes with the straw boater hat and kazoo. Balloons. Even when you're sleeping on a friend's couch, you have to pay some kind of rent.
I like the writing life, but it's not something that always makes enough money.
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.
For years, I survived as an artist on grants and touring as a dancer with dance companies, and I was living underground like so many artists, hand-to-mouth and so forth. And I never had the power to make decisions.
I don't get holiday, I'm self-employed. That's a really big risk for anyone in telly.
My mother worked in factories, worked as a domestic, worked in a restaurant, always had a second job.
Unfortunately - as I have experienced first-hand, as many artists have - there's a gaping hole between platinum and non-existent. There's no in-between.
