A Quote by Ben Stiller

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again. — © Ben Stiller
The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.
The only reason I'm ever in character as 'Larry The Cable Guy' is because that's what I'm hired to do. In my movies, obviously they hired 'Larry The Cable Guy' to be 'Larry The Cable Guy.' When I do my shows, I'm 'Larry The Cable Guy.' When I do Jay Leno, it's: 'Please welcome 'Larry The Cable Guy.'
Americans hate their cable companies - for bumbling installers, on-again-off-again transmissions, peculiar channel selections, and indifferent customer service. The only thing cable subscribers hate more than the cable company is not being able to get what it delivers: multichannel selection and good reception.
I don't even see it as cable TV anymore. I've been called 'Larry the Cable Guy' for so long, I don't even think about it being about cable. I don't know anything about cable.
Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.
I had an acting career for a little while back in the '90s. I had gotten into that because I was interested in acting, but I was not really as centered as I needed to be to fully pursue that career, and I was doing some films I thought were not of the best quality.
Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the experience of doing it. Writing is kind of more satisfying in that you're creating a world and doing something that feels bigger, but it's very time consuming and has a higher threshold for failure.
Larry the Cable Guy has everything: sleeveless shirts, stupid catchphrases. He's Mr. T without the acting chops.
[Rejection] made me quit writing once. For six months. I started up again when my then seven-year-old son asked me to start writing again because I was too grumpy when I wasn't writing.
I've always known from the beginning of my acting career that you only get an acting job if you've got something to learn about it. If you don't do it well, you'll be condemned to doing the same role over and over and over again. If you do it mediocre, you'll have to do it again.
I buried myself so much in the classics that I felt, "Well now, I've played all the big parts, whether badly or goodly, I don't give a damn, but at least I've played them all. Now, let's start again. Let's start the whole career again." And it makes you feel like you're beginning again, it really does.
I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing, and directing lead to five movies, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.
There's something about taking emotional and career and relationship humiliations, writing them, acting them out again, but then redeeming them in some way.
Luckily, I had a guy like Andre Johnson to show me the ropes. He's had many quarterbacks in his career and he still had a successful career. Just having a guy like that to tell me to control what I can control, that's really all you can do.
When you first start writing-and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it-and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better.
Michael Keaton had a great, great career. I do remember when I was a young guy thinking about him, about how he'd had the chance to do it all, so yeah. But, there's nobody where I've said, "Man, I really want that guy's career."
It took a while to find a passion for another career that was as strong as the passion that I had for football. Once I found it in acting, it was simple. Use the tools you were given from playing football and apply it to your new passion. I have done that through acting, producing and writing.
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