Acting Struggles Quotes

Acting is very competitive. There are few good scripts out there and the ones that are good are very competitive. You look at your options and often times they're not too appealing.

Trying to constantly get yourself into movies is extremely stressful and sometimes just impossible.

I think being a guest star on an ongoing TV show can be a nightmare, and I've done it a lot. You're walking into this family who's very comfortable where they are, and you have to jump on the train and be artificially comfortable. That's a very hard thing to do.

Being an actor in L.A. is like being in prison: you go, you serve your time, you try to replicate Johnny Depp's career - and then you move to Paris.

I had a really complicated relationship with acting for a long time.

In Yale they convinced me I had no talent, even though I was always working. They cast me mostly as prostitutes and old women, and I stayed because I loved the writers. I loved Chris Durang and Wendy Wasserstein. I was always doing their work in the Yale Cabaret.

When I have to do an emotional scene, I sometimes feel drained right before doing it.

I had very little confidence in myself as an actress.

Being pulled that long and that hard for a 12-hour day gave me migraines. It's what they used to do before there were facelifts for actresses – you know, Joan Crawford's whole career was this. Then the makeup is like Earl Scheib auto body paint sprayed on my face.

But so much of being an actor isn't so great - the auditioning, the rejection, the financial insecurity.

Trust me, it has been anything but easy to make it as an actor.

I didn't have to audition. That's common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think... let the character develop and grow inside me.

I'm not very good when I'm given scripts.

Being an actor is mostly about rejection and being out of work. It was a fast lesson in all of that stuff.

In 1984, I starred in 'Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan,' my first movie. My lines ended up being dubbed by Glenn Close, supposedly because my accent was 'too southern'. It was completely humiliating at the time. I became a laughing stock. I'm amazed that I managed to pick myself up and dust myself off.

I've played several real characters, and I've always found it very difficult because you don't want to do an impersonation.

If you take every challenge everyone has in their life and multiply it in severity you get what it's like in the life of an actor.

You suffer as an actor. It's difficult to be an actor and live a good life, especially today.

I've been an actor for 20 years, and I think the first 14 years, it was all struggling. At first, it was all gangsters.

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

People ask me, 'Did you ever want to be a live-action Peter Parker?' Are you kidding me? These actors live in a gym and wear really uncomfortable tights for 14 hours a day. And it's not like you're doing some very fun acting. Shooting is a real drag. Then you do press for five months? I don't think I could get it.

I've been working as an actress and sort of struggling along for ten years, so I've been on a million auditions for a million things I haven't booked.

Most actors will tell you, when they've got emotional stuff that's hard to carry around for hours and hard to try to do justice too, it just beats your butt.

I took a Groundlings class in my 20s, and I was terrible. They didn't even pass me to the next level.

I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.