A Quote by Patton Oswalt
Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte; I didn't know what I was doing, and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.
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Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte, I didn't know what I was doing and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.
I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.
Growing up on Mad Men with so many incredible actors and then going on to other things with amazing people, I never had any formal acting training, but they are all acting schools, basically. Just watching and learning from the best is insane. It's like having an internship and watching all these amazing people doing their work. You just soak it up like a sponge, hopefully.
I'm going to continue to try to strike a balance, because I really, really do love doing stand-up, and I don't see why it should affect the acting. And again, I'm not going, "I've got to become a dramatic actor now." I just want more interesting jobs. I just want to keep doing stuff that's different.
Don't ever, ever, believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by, by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there's always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you're doing. And they're going to work harder than you if you're not working hard.
I used to take acting so seriously, but after we did the Quest pilot and the show sold, Kurt Russel said, "You know, you work too hard. You'll make yourself sick. You can't work that hard doing a series, because it goes on so long. It's like a baseball season. You've got 162 games. You can't just go all-out the first week or two. You can't maintain that pace." And it's true.
Honestly, I don't look at it as work because I have way too much fun on set to actually classify it as work. I know a lot of people who are like, 'Man, acting's so much work.' And I'm like, 'No, it's not. I'm having fun.' And I want to keep doing that. I don't ever want to give up acting.
Acting can be so much fun that it's easy to forget that what you're doing is a job. But if I've got my tie on, I'm going to work.
I feel incredibly lucky at this moment in my career to get paid to do basically exactly what I always wanted to do. I appreciate that in general. But you know, like any job, a job is a job, and there are days that are going to be boring, or you have a boss you don't like, or people you work with.
It's strange: I always try to do the best acting job I can do under the imaginary circumstances of my working position at any given time. But it's terrible when you know it's going bad, and you know it immediately. But you just have to still try to do the best job you can.
I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.
As an actor, it's always important to understand what the director is after. That, to me, is my job. When I'm acting, I like to ask a lot of questions and understand exactly why the director is doing what they're doing, so that I can provide him or her with the ingredients that they need to get the scene that they want. It's not to challenge them, in any way. It's just so that I can do my job best.
It all started in Michigan. My dad got a job in Michigan, so we all moved up there from St. Louis. I kind of hung out in the summer and had nothing to do, so I sort of got into acting. And then I was going to Grand Blanc High, doing the acting thing and hoping it would pan out.
When I went to auditions, if I didn't know the lines, I wasn't getting the job. If I knew my lines, if I knew what I was supposed to be doing, I got the job. And it was always like that - if I'm working hard, I get the result that I'm looking for.
Everybody understands that acting is a really difficult job. It's hard work. You've got to get dressed up, you've got to hang around with beautiful women. It's difficult. It's a problem.
Growing up, I always got 'She's a man,' or 'She plays too hard,' or 'There's just no way that she can be that good because, you know, a girl can't do that.' And I struggle with it a little bit. I'm like: Well, am I going too hard? And then I just realized, like, I'm a competitor.
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