Struggling Artist Quotes

I'm a struggling guitar player.

In my early days, I was about 145 pounds. I was really a starving artist; the poster child for starving artists.

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

My relationship with my first child was nonexistent. I was broke and I was a new rapper whose career was spiraling downward.

I'm always feeling like I have to do some bad action movie for money.

When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.

The film's star, Eminem, doesn't appear to have a great deal of range, but he can play himself. Even though the protagonist is named Jimmy Smith, the thoughtful '8 Mile' is a raw version of the rapper's own story.

In a packed programme tonight, we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet.

I like to work. I mean, part of it for me is that I was a struggling actor, could barely pay my rent, until I was almost 40.

After I finished school, I headed for Los Angeles, thinking, 'Movies. Beaches.' But I wanted to do serious stage work, so I upped sticks and moved to New York to study. I did the usual day jobs to support myself - waiting on tables, washing dishes, parking cars, anything to pay the rent. I was a terrible waiter, by the way.

Yo get a real job. Rappin doesn't pay the rent, I hate the studio cause that's where all my money went.

I was a waitress years ago when I was first trying to become an actress, waiting tables in New York City.

I was an artist - I fancied myself an artist - I sold paintings at bars to pay my rent.

You're always taught that the world is so competitive. You're taught that it's not very likely for you to become successful and that odds are you're going to be a struggling artist for the rest of your life.

I do smaller films, I'm not getting big paydays. I feel like we're just kind of scraping together here.

Initially, I wanted to do films with A-list actors when I was struggling. I was hoping that I could also get that platform where I'm launched with Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Aamir Khan... and with them my career could also start, but it didn't happen. And then came 'Queen.'

When you're a musician, a lot of time people help you out; they take pity on you. Family members will kind of come around and are like, 'Listen, I bought you a bunch of groceries because I know that you're a screwup.'

I moved to New York City in '92 and had no money. I had a lot of free time, as actors do. I would go to the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

I feel people can relate to the struggling artist a little more sometimes than the big million-dollar country stars.

For a year after I left Cambridge, I had an agent, and I was working in a pub and doing waitering. But I could stay at home rent-free.

I've been very lucky in the characters I've chosen. Up until last year I was a nobody. I did jobs I booked because I needed to put food in my mouth.

When I was coming up with the Hal Hartley films, I was cast as a no one. I had no name visibility. I was working at a downtown post-performance-art, avant garde theater company and doing a couple things on television. But I was a total unknown.

When I went to New York to try and make it, I never thought it wouldn't happen.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

I wrote a script - a script about a guy working on the automobile assembly line; I never could get money for that. I did a pilot about minimum wage workers for HBO that didn't get picked up; they thought it was depressing, even though it was a comedy.