The people at home don't care what your problems are. They just know that you're doing that show and you're supposed to do the best you can do. It's not a 9-5 type of job. I've considered myself very lucky to do that kind of work.
I explained to my kids at an early age: I'm a normal dad with an abnormal job.
Actually, bizarrely, in America, I get more appreciation from the odd, unusual stuff I've done, almost because I'm not, if you like, famous in America as I am in England.
Most people that work in [show] business, if they're not gypsies by nature, become gypsies, just because of the reality of this business.
It's not normal, what I do. Just being on television isn't.
'Dirty Jobs' is maybe the simplest show in the history of TV, with the possible exception of 'The Gong Show'. I go around the country; we've shot in every state. And we spend a day with people who do jobs that are dirty or dangerous or ridiculous or difficult.
I think I always knew I wasn't gonna have a regular job.
Being an entrepreneur is not a 9-to-5 job.
I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I've done it all. I've worked as a clown, literally, at children's parties.
It is a pretty odd profession - tickling people - but it can be lucrative.
I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives.
What we do for a living is not normal, and therefore, the process is not normal sometimes, and to expect it to be normal is to not understand what happens on set.
One of the most humbling gigs I've ever had was I was paid by a neighbor to go get a dead bird out of her house. She was kind of a high up in the music business, and she knew that I needed cash, and I used to do some yard work for her.
My work more than didn't fit in. It crossed willy-nilly the boundaries that people had spent their lives building up. It hits some 30 subfields of biology, even geology.
I don't have the ability to do a nine-to-five nor do I have the desire to. Stand-up is the only thing that's come completely naturally to me.
I did all sorts of things that you wouldn't normally find on an engineer's docket, but it made an educated person out of me.
I think it's kind of great, to be honest. I'll never do another film [like Swiss Army Man] where I get to talk about those things, so I might as well enjoy it while I can.
I've worked behind counters serving food, and I've lived on the circus train, and I've led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I've been a key liner for a newspaper, I've done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things.
I love Hugh Laurie, but I don't want to be a guy who goes to work every day for nine months of the year in a corner of Burbank. I really don't. I like doing a bit here and a bit there and strange things, and I think that's held me back.
My youngest son's pre-school class was recently asked what their dads do for work. The responses were things like, my dad sells money, and my dad figures stuff out. My son said, 'I've never seen my dad do work.' It's true. Skateboarding doesn't seem like real work, but I'm proud of what I do.
I didn't think being a writer was a fancy thing. It was a job like any other job, except apparently you could do it at home.
Being actors is a strange job.
I installed anti-rust roofing into homes in Cairns. I packed boxes at Baby Barn. I was even a Manny! Mate, I know more about braiding hair and My Little Pony than most men, I can tell ya.
Idleness - a job that you have to go to, but not necessarily do anything - is the poet's friend.
If I ever do anything, it actually might be some fantasy elf thing or even some cute, funny thing. Just to do something a little bit out of the ordinary. I've done my superhero gig.
