Quotes About Career

I could never be a movie star and get up at 7:30 to be at someone else's studio.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

I would also like to act, once in a while, but not get up every morning at 5:30 or six o'clock and pound into the studio and get home at 7:30 or eight o'clock at night, or act over and over and over every night on Broadway, either.

I'm really interested in having a studio one day and being a filmmaker.

I've never done a big studio film, I've only ever done little ones.

Dore Schary was then head of the studio and he wanted to change my name.

I guess in the independent market, I'd be getting offers, but in terms of big studio films, I still have to audition. I don't think my name is that well-known, I don't have much of a following to guarantee box office success yet.

It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job. I really don't think about my career, in terms of planning it out and what this does for me.

In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.

I've been blessed in my career to be able to do studio and independent films.

I have a lot of experience in the studio, performing onstage, talking to an audience. I learned most of that stuff when I was performing with my mom.

I loved the medium of TV from the first moment that I got into a studio.

Not many people get that chance to have multiple studios wanting you to make a movie with them.

Mani laughs every time he hears someone ask me, 'Don't you miss acting?' Because he sees me with make-up on every morning and leaving for the studios.

You have to work to be relevant. If you don't, then people will forget, and the studios won't want you because they won't remember the last thing you did that made money.

In the old days the studios guided your career. Now it's all up to you.

In the contract days, the big studios groomed us to play particular roles and we would stay with the image they gave us and insisted on.

The studios knew how to build a star, and they knew what to do with you. They also taught you everything.

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

I like working. I wish I could say I made a deliberate choice to comedy, but it's just what came my way. It's what the studios wanted to make. Some of my friends were doing it, like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and they offered me 'Talladega Nights.' It's just nice work if you can get it. It's a joyful day at work, making your friends laugh.

If you're a young actor, unless you're on a very short list at the studios, we have to be very creative about moving your career along. Otherwise, all we can do is hope to get lucky and find that perfect role that pops you into stardom.

If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.

I'm not in a position where I can pick and choose. It's the other way around. The studios pick and choose.

I don't think anybody at the major studios is rushing to offer me a romantic lead.