I think acting is a job where you're always unemployed. You're always looking for the next job, so I assume that it's like other jobs that are with that same kind of setup.
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.
There have been periods of my career that I haven't worked for a really long time, like seven or eight months.
Show business is - you're there by somebody's fluke. And as long as somebody likes you, and the show is going well, you're fine. I'd do anything. There's so much I want to do.
When my sister decided that she wanted to act, I was so nervous for her. She's doing great, but I have a lot of friends at every level of success as an actor, and we all go through periods of time where they feel like their worth isn't within their own control. That's a horrible feeling for an adult to have.
I had a very strange career. I mean I went from playing to 150,000 people in 1983/84. Three or four years later I was playing to four people, you know, in Melbourne. I thought - bit strange, you know bit odd, bit erratic.
As an actor, you always feel like you're not going to work again. You're always unsure about how things are going to work out, and you start thinking you're going to just fade off into the distance.
You look at my career, everywhere I went - Miami, Green Bay, Cleveland, Philly - they were always bringing in draft picks and former first-rounders and guys with free-agent deals to take my job.
Acting is the most bizarre profession. You can stay in it for years and not really be in it and be waiting for someone to give you an opportunity. It's like when I watch 'American Idol' and see people who have been told to believe in themselves at all costs: It's not always a good idea.
What's frustrating as an actor, when you want to work hard, you can only work once that phone rings and then you can only work until the production wraps. Then you have to find another job.
As a working actor, all I want to do is work. That's it. It's terrifying when you don't work. It's very hard when you don't work. There have been times when I've been out of work for like six months. I feel theatre to me is like manna.
My so-called career is a haphazard thing.
I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it's not even a meritocracy. It's about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it's impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I've always understood it as such, and navigated it as such.
Acting is a strange business; one day it's there, and the next day nowhere to be seen.
Acting is a career without a safety net, because it's not like a professional job where every year you hope to be promoted, and get a sense of career stability. There is never any stability in this business.
I have gone from a player who thought he would spend his whole career with one organization to a player who's been with three organizations in a week. It's like rotisserie baseball.
To be frank, my career as an actor was not even taking care of my lifestyle. Doing two odd films a year wasn't making me financially secure.
I was on 'Gilmore Girls' for seven years and had a couple decent years after that. Then, two years of almost nothing. I had jobs here and there, but I got very, very scared.
Motorsport is very expensive. No one cares if you had a good season two years ago and then you have an injury. It is a very dodgy investment.
I could never hold a job for more than three months, which works out well because that's how long a movie shoots.
You're going to see ups and downs your whole career.
I've been saying this for years: There is no longer such a thing as a safe and secure job.
That's the NFL: Not For Long. First year's a welcome year. Second it's, What are you going to do? Third year's like, Well, you didn't do much last year; give us something or you're going. That's the way it is. They'll trade you or they'll cut you.
Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.
My career after 'Life Unexpected' took a really big dip, and I realized you have no control as an actor over the process of going to work.
