Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Timothy Simons.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Timothy Charles Simons is an American actor and comedian best known for his role as Jonah Ryan on the HBO television series Veep, for which he has received five nominations and one win for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. He has also had acting roles in the films The Interview, Christine, and The Boss.
My first job in L.A. was actually playing an employee in a Best Buy commercial, but I played a bad employee at another store. I also worked at a commercial casting company running cameras and session directing.
Ultimately, I just made the decision to move to L.A. sight unseen. It took me a while to save up some money to do it.
I'm a night person, but because of being in the film business and having children, my schedule has shifted, and I'm always terrified that I'm going to oversleep.
After school, I was planning to jump from regional theater to regional theater.
I'm particularly bad at breaking if something's funny. I'm not professional, so I do often laugh, but less at what I do and more often at what other people do.
There are people I've met in L.A. who kind of only talk about the business. Because maybe they think that's the best move.
David Letterman was my guy growing up. My parents recorded the tenth anniversary special for me, and I watched it 40 times.
There is that great thing of D.C. being Hollywood for ugly people. There's very distinct crossover behaviors.
My dad's a photographer, and my sister is a writer and a poet. My little brother is a mandolin player - he's a bluegrass musician. It's always been a part of the family.
I think the absolute worst job I ever had - not because it was a terrible job, just because I was just so bad at it - was when I worked at a scenic factory in Chicago.
Keeping children alive and free of disease is not a political issue and cannot be put into a partisan box.
It's so odd because I don't even know if I'm cut out for it, but being a movie star guy, I sort of end up gravitating toward the Coen brothers. That's one of the reasons my wife and I moved to L.A.: that however much of a pipe dream that would be, I moved to L.A. because I'd love to work with the Coen brothers.
Truthfully, I don't like the binge-watching model. I think that if you give everybody everything all at once, there's very much a law of diminishing returns as far as their enjoyment of them.
I was born in the Northeast, and I have Midwestern parents.
My dad was a photographer, so we had all these studio portraits of us.
IPods just made music about how many songs you could have on you at all times.
When I was in Chicago, I was working as a carpenter while I was doing plays. I thought it'd be a fun set construction job, but it turned up to just be a straight-up factory.
I'll believe I made it when I'm 100 years old, I'm still able to get work, and they're about to put me in a coffin, and I'll be like, 'Yeah, OK, it went all right.' But until then, I'm not saying it.
I don't know, and certainly I've been guilty of making a judgment about a celebrity, but there's a part of me that's like, 'Why don't you take the time you're spending ripping James Franco and go do something you like?'
It's much harder to get a job if nobody wants you around.
I don't have actors in my family, but everyone is pretty artistic.
You don't want someone to think you're from New Hampshire, because who cares about New Hampshire? You're basically just a pass-through.
Reed Scott is really good at coming up with insults.
I've done a pretty good job of curating a Twitter feed that doesn't make me hate the world.
The Duplass brothers do that so well - that very simple, very horrifically awkward comedy.
When I was a carpenter, I built sets for small storefront Chicago companies. Like, I built sets for friends of mine at The House Theater.
I've lived with myself for a very long time, so I'm aware of what I look like. I'm under no false pretense that I'm a stunner, so if somebody comes up and says something about my physical appearance, it's okay.
I used to love going to shows and finding new bands, but the Internet takes the fun out of it. Like a band? You can buy and download every single song they have ever done within five minutes.
I'm a dog person, but I don't have a pet.
The one thing I always think about when I don't get jobs is that it just wasn't yours. You don't want to do something that you're not right for because it won't make the production look good, and it won't make you look good.
You're taught from a very young age that you shouldn't get too big for your britches, so I tend to err way too much on the side of 'Nothing means anything.'
I'm saying nothing new that Dave Pasquesi is really good at what he does.
The truth is, there is no link between vaccines and autism. Vaccines are incredibly important.
I think I was a behavior problem, mostly, but in a fun way. I tried to tell jokes. I was the middle kid, so I was always looking for attention and trying to be the one that equalized everything.
If you didn't watch 'The Shield,' you should stop everything you are doing and go back and watch 'The Shield.'
I like sort of esoteric and weird Twitter jokes. But I actually unfollow people if they make jokes about a celebrity's death within the first two minutes of that celebrity dying.
There is a part of me that really just thinks it would be so funny to see the 'Veep' characters in 'Game of Thrones.'
We live in a world in which whatever you do has a parody account online in moments.
I got my SAG card doing a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial in Chicago.
If you're going to go to an audition, you don't want to go in trying to force yourself into some archetype that has been thought up by a director and translated by a casting director.
I was born tall. I was awkward and gangly. Before that, I was a really chubby elementary school kid. I've always been sort of a physical abnormality.
I started out with the intention of studying physics. I was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.
I really wanted to go to a city and get involved in a theater scene and a theater community. I had some friends who had moved out to Chicago and had said really good things about it and about the work. I didn't care at that time about making money.
Unless you're playing a historical figure, a writer or director can change their minds. And sometimes your job is to make them change their minds - to make them believe that you're the one that can do it.
My children, twins who are three years old, they're awful creatures right now.
I grew up in Maine working at a video store and found myself being pulled more and more to on-camera stuff.
I took one class at Second City called Improv for Actors, and that was it, and that was only because my agent told me I had to.
I'm very much in favor of vaccinations, and I've been very vocal about that because it's insane to forgo this.
If an actor ever says they really enjoy the auditioning process, I truly believe that they're lying. It's an anxiety-filled waking nightmare. It's awful.
"Believe in yourself" - that makes sense. You should believe in yourself - you should believe that you're capable of great things - but you would hope that somebody would have some sort of self-awareness.
I was interning at a children's theater group in Kentucky - that was my first job out of college. I had jumped around a couple of regional theaters, and I was about to go back to Maine to work at a summer Shakespeare theater there. I didn't want to just jump around the country from gig to gig. I really wanted to go to a city and get involved in a theater scene and a theater community.
Donald Trump is so universally despised, because he so often says the wrong thing and has absolutely no moral code outside of just wanting to be powerful and influential.
It's weird to have to look at another co-worker and have a silent discussion - any discussion - about how you are going to touch their genitals or allow them to touch your genitals.
I do suppose what any political satire, what any political joke can count as a gaffe or a possible career-ending move. It changes what counts. I don’t know, I do feel like day to day even though Trump is so terrible and ridiculous, day to day we still laugh at Jason Chaffetz and we still laugh at Ted Cruz and we still laugh at those guys, at just how bad they are at their jobs.
I had grown up working in a video store, and I'd grown up more with film than I had with theater, so I kind of felt a natural call.
It's a funny thing, I think people meet us and they assume that we know a lot more about politics than we actually do. People will really get into it. I'm like, I don't really know a lot about tariff reform or export trade reform. That's really not something I know about.
I was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.
This is still true with auditions - you have to forget about them immediately. You have to put them out of your head, otherwise you're going to drive yourself crazy.
I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Van Ness, but that was the first time that I had met him on the Gay Of Thrones set, and as soon as we sat down, it was clear that just about anything he was going to say I was going to have no idea what it meant. I have literally no idea, so that ended up being a really fun bit to find, like "The old man doesn't know what kids talk about." We started talking about red carpets. I was taught how to stand on the red carpet. Put your hand in your pocket and that's it. That's literally all a guy has to do.
I think I get in trouble sometimes, especially when it's like I need to be easier on [my] kids because maybe I'm a rule-follower now. I'll look at something like the kids' coloring or something and I'm like, "That's not the way that marker should be used." All imagination is gone, and it's just like, "Here's the proper way that we use a marker," you know? Maybe that's a dad thing.