Aisling Bea Quotes

I've heard that George Clooney did something like nine pilots before 'ER' was picked up, way back when he was doing TV. It's just the way the business works. There are a lot of pilots that we've never seen. It's protocol.

I've done 10 or 11 pilots for network television, which is ridiculous.

I had been on several shows that were meant to be the big ones, that would go on forever, and they didn't.

Pilot season isn't perfect, and it certainly is a very difficult time. But pilot season does work for us.

For the longest time, I was auditioning, getting called back, and I had a long string of things not going my way. I thought, 'Maybe this is never going happen. Maybe I'll never book a commercial.'

And generally the shows I'm in fail really big.

NBC's pilot season of 1994 is legendary in the business. In a world where failure is commonplace, we midwifed the birth of both 'Friends' and 'ER'. While 'ER' came essentially out of the blue, we'd been casting around for a 'Friends'-like show for some time at the network.

In L.A., you constantly go on auditions, and you're usually not what they're looking for - you get used to going back and back to the same show, and nothing happens.

I was going to move to New York after college and had no interest in pilot season. I'd seen what happened on TV shows because of my dad, and I didn't want to open myself up to that. But 'Pretty Little Liars' had a very early audition, and my agents encouraged me to go even though I didn't think it would be my thing.

I have had so many bad auditions.

I tried out for my basketball team every year and I never made it. You had to buy the shoes before you knew if you were on the team because it took a few weeks for them to ship. I bought the shoes every year, never once made the team, had a ton of high school basketball shoes.

Acting is a life of rejection.

I didn't expect any success at all. I was rejected by every publisher in the world and every agent in town.

There's only so much you can do of trying, finding yourself very close to getting a part and then not getting it.

There's this funny thing with pilots that you have to sign the contract to do the whole job before you're even offered the part. And they make about a million pilots a year, but hardly any of them get turned into series.

I never took to Hollywood.

Being rejected is not nice, and it never gets any easier no matter where you are in your career.

The pilot system in television is utterly broken. It's a huge waste of money.

I had developed a sitcom with UPN, but it wasn't picked up.

The thing about TV is it's a meritocracy. I love that aspect of it - and I've had shows that have gone on the air and been canceled. I've seen the good and the bad of it.

My show 'The Big House' was picked up; they flew me to New York. I'm about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart's 'The Big House.' And a hand grabs my shoulder, 'Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.' It's a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can't.

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.

When you are an actor, rejection and disappointment are an occupational hazard.

My first show was called 'I Know I've Been Changed' in '92. I tried to do this show for years and years. It kept failing over and over and over again. Every time I went out to do the show, nobody showed up. I was like, 'What is this about?'

I trained myself to not get my hopes up, because there were so many times in the room where you'd be like, 'This feels amazing, this is a hit!' And it never saw the light of day.