15 Famous Actors Share the Truth About Their Jobs
1. "Everyone’s left their families, their homes, their friends, their jobs to pursue a dream where they know that the percentage of them achieving that dream is never, and they do it anyway [...] You’re lucky to get an audition. Then you get it, you get there, you walk into a room full of guys that look just like you. You realize that you’re not the only one that wore the cowboy hat. Then you can hear the other guy in the other room auditioning, and now you’re thinking about not doing it like him." - Ryan Gosling in Seduced and Abandoned, 2014
2. "I don't think you can really be an effective actor if you're not curious about people and events. And if you're interested in things, you want to go deeper and you want to know more. At least, the thing [that's always] ignited my own excitement about working is to know more about somebody: What made them do this? What in God's name went wrong?” - Meryl Streep, in a 2010 speech at the University of Texas
3. "It’s like when people talk about the difficulty of making a movie, and I’m like, send your son to Iraq, that’s difficult. It’s just a movie. It’s like relax. I don’t play that precious nonsense. Your son got shot in the face. That’s difficult. Making a movie is a luxury. It’s a gift, it’s an opportunity, but most importantly it’s a gift." - Denzel Washington, in a 2016 Hollywood Reporter roundtable
4. "As an actor, I always come in so open and willing and devoted. I really think the intensity of the work and the relationship requires the devotion, and requires the ability to be malleable, yet to still speak up and not be sort of a doormat, but also adapt. So much of it is adapting, because [all the characters are] different." - Nicole Kidman to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2017
5. "To be in a profession where you’re constantly judged, critiqued, scrutinized, however you want to classify it, I’ve always been very, I think, rather adept at self-observation." - Julia Roberts to Charlie Rose in 2000
6. "You look back and you find yourself being thought of in a certain way [for roles], and I think that’s the good fortune of working, where people start going, 'Oh, you would be great for this!' But then, the part I hate about it is that how people see you can become very narrow at a certain point. And so, it becomes a fight for you to sort of be thought of in a different light, or also fighting your own fear about wondering if you can do something beyond what you’ve done already." - Mahershala Ali, to The Hollywood Reporter in 2016
7. "My preparation is always pretty much the same, regardless of whether it’s a $150 million film or a $1.5 million or whatever it may be - I’ve got to do a lot of homework, and I’ve just got to be well-equipped when I come onto the floor. And I want to come onto the floor with ideas. And I want to also be well-prepared so I have the ability to have a freedom to explore any avenue on the day. And have fun. - Michael Fassbender to Backstage TV in 2016
8. "You can't be a good actor if you get too affected by fame. Because then you're not real and you're not really wanting more. You look at a lot of actors who, before they were famous, did a lot of amazing work, and once they got too big, it just got off." - Ansel Elgort in Buzzfeed in 2014
9. "The industry is very fickle, and you just do what you can and know that all this stuff doesn't mean anything. I mean, obviously, appreciate the opportunities and work hard, but there's so much more to life. This industry is a tough one to crack." - Hilary Duff in Between the Lines in 2015
10. "I write a bio of the character. I try to fill it up as much as possible. What are her memories? Does she have brothers and sisters? What secrets does she have? What’s her favorite color? I do all of that work first.” - Viola Davis to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2017
11. "Everything you do as an actor ends up taking you somewhere else. All of the emotions that you have to go through whether it’s loving a girl or laughing outrageously in something hilarious. Everything I’ve ever done in a film, it requires this getting to some sort of emotional reality that is contrary to the actual setting that you’re in." - Tom Hanks, on Backstage TV in 2016
12. "It’s not that you change [when you become an actor], which is the constant thing that you hear - 'Oh, you’ve changed.' It’s that you wake up one morning, and you know intellectually that nothing is different in the world. The big things are all the same. [...] It’s just the world’s relation to you is completely different, and that’s a very strange thing, because your world is completely different, but the world is exactly the same. So, that takes a little getting used to." - Matt Damon on ABC News Australia in 2013
13. "I love the fact that I get to train for a year as a Jesuit priest and then train to be a cop and learn how to make a rocking chair. I want to know everything about everything, and that's not possible and it won't be possible." - Andrew Garfield in The Hollywood Reporter in 2016
14. "As an actor, there’s a lot of control that we lose and we immediately don’t have the moment you start a project. You can give the best of yourself and have done the most amazing research, and then the director takes it into an editing room for nine months with his editor, and it might be a completely different thing. So if you think of it that way, the actor is the one element in a project that has the least amount of power." - Zoe Saldana to Backstage TV in 2016
15. "Not to sound rude, but [acting] is stupid ... Everybody's like, 'How can you remain with a level head?' And I'm like, 'Why would I ever get cocky? I'm not saving anybody's life. There are doctors who save lives and firemen who run into burning buildings. I'm making movies. It's stupid." - Jennifer Lawrence to Vanity Fair in 2013
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