Michael Imperioli Quotes

Before the Netflixs and the Amazons and the Hulus, there was nothing. TV came to a standstill. Movie actors were taking TV parts, and it was just nuts.

I think that as television is evolving, the line between TV and film is becoming more and more blurred. This is both a good and bad thing.

A lot of amazing films are happening, a lot amazing TV shows are happening, and people are not afraid to pick actors instead of stars.

I did 'Red Riding,' which is TV in the U.K. It became a feature project in North America, but we're in a great era of TV. We all know that, and we hear it all the time, but for filmmakers, it's just a godsend to have your television writing and work to do on television, and the means to do it properly.

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

It used to be you did TV or you did film. Now it's like a media blitz.

The crossover wasn't happening. TV actors were TV actors, and film and stage actors were a whole different thing. And now there's just a lot of crossover.

Film people are coming into TV, because they can't get any work.

The stigma that used to exist many years ago, that actors from film don't do television, seems to have disappeared. That camera doesn't know it's a TV camera... or even a streaming camera. It's just a camera.

I don't get tons of scripts to be looking at and deciding on in terms of feature films; the industry has changed. Fortunately, with television and streaming and original series online, there's this whole new thing that has opened up, which I think is fantastic.

I am here to tell you, TV is not dead. Rather, it is constantly evolving as we are. My view is that we are in the next Golden Age of content. If AOL, Google, Netflix, Amazon, and Yahoo felt TV was dying, they would not be so eager to play in our sandbox. It is, after all, TV content that's driving their business.

Everyone who comes to the entertainment industry wants to be a film actor. Who wants to be a television actor by choice? I want to change the perception of Indian television as being the poor man's medium.

I feel like it's a golden age for television.

I think everything keeps changing. There was a time when television was a bad thing for actors and it meant that you could only do television, and now we see everyone does television.

I grew up doing plays - I went to a stage school after school - and it's always something that I've wanted to do, but, in a weird way, if you do television and film and you didn't go to drama school and don't have a theatrical background, it's hard to get your foot in the door. In the same way that it is for theater actors to get into television and film. There's a weird prejudice that goes both ways.

I was disillusioned by Hollywood at the time, but now I've come to accept that's just the way things are: it's called show business, not show art.

[E]very time you think the entertainment moguls have hit rock bottom, they reach for the jackhammer and rat-a-tat-tat a little deeper.

There's a lot of great stuff on television and that's very appealing to actors who want to work, who do good quality and high quality work. But you're always concerned that the time demands on television will interrupt or interfere with your film work.

The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential. The movie people are just beginning to get a grasp on film.

Show business is like Champagne. You'll appreciate it more if you don't drink it everyday

Film and television was so strange to me because I didn't grow up in the business, I didn't know anything about it.

It's funny, 90 percent of what I've done has been television, and I never really wanted to do it that much. I was really interested in film and theater. What's ironic is that when I started doing television, I did a bunch of amazing shows all in a row, starting with The Corner.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

When I look at my career, the bulk of it has been television, and I love working in television. But there's a speed at which you do it. You're doing seven to ten pages a day on a series, and it's hard to feel like you're doing the detail-oriented work that I like to do.

I'd never done any film or television. Well, I'd done one little stupid commercial in Boston when I was doing theater, but that was it.