Audition Quotes

#1. I think fear is unavoidable and that, when recognized and embraced, it's something that can work for you - especially in the audition room.

Trevor Donovan

#2. If I had any advice to give people, it would be to relax; never treat an audition like an emergency. There will be plenty more in your career. If you think you messed up, you probably didn't. And if you did mess up, it's not the end of the world.

Gregg Sulkin

#3. My characters have to talk, or they're out. They audition in early scenes. If they can't talk, they're given less to do, or thrown out.

Elmore Leonard

#4. I'm not one of those people who can cry on cue. If I have to cry in an audition, I'm like, 'Okay, let me see what I can do.'

Melanie Lynskey

#5. It can't be overstated how wonderful it is not to have to audition any more. Any actor will tell you, it's like Christmas.

Bill Nighy

#6. I completely bombed the audition ... I was insecure, stopping and starting. I went to the bathroom and cried.

Lake Bell

#7. Many's the audition I waltzed into unprepared and wondered why I didn't get it. I learned the hard way.

Deirdre O'Kane

#8. There's no substitute to actually being in the room and having people in the room feel the force of your audition. It's very hard to beat that.

Zach Galligan

#9. I'm proud of everything I achieved with 'Idol,' and away from 'Idol' also. It's just such a different show now to what it was when I was on it. I didn't even know it was a TV show until the third audition.

Kelly Clarkson

#10. I didn't have to audition. That's common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think ... let the character develop and grow inside me.

Casey Affleck

#11. I want to move to Hollywood and audition for parts just so I can say, I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

Jarod Kintz

#12. I literally remember when I made my audition tape for 'Buffy'. I went to the Arsenal Mall. I got my outfit at Contempo Casuals in the Arsenal Mall and put some safety pins in my jeans. I remember telling whoever the clerk was that I was making a tape for 'Buffy', and they were so excited.

Eliza Dushku

#13. I changed the lyrics of 'All I Need Is the Girl' to 'All I Need Is the Job' for an audition years ago. It's a great ice-breaker - people want to laugh.

Bryan Batt

#14. 'Girls' was my first audition. I'd just taken an audition class, and I was excited to implement those tools.

Allison Williams

#15. I like doing films and I wish that I could do more but I still have to audition. I don't get offered starring roles in movies even though I've written and starred in a movie.

Tim Meadows

#16. I like being able to put out my own content instead of just going from audition to audition and just waiting and hoping.

Reagan Gomez-Preston

#17. Cheerleading was my way in. It was one of the most rigorous audition processes ever. It definitely groomed me for Hollywood.

Sarah Shahi

#18. In today's world, everything seems like some sort of long audition.

Bob Fosse

#19. When I was 8, my dad asked me if I wanted to audition, just for fun. I did just a little short film, and I liked it. I just kept doing it, and then I started getting bigger auditions for bigger roles.

Kodi Smit-McPhee

#20. I don't think auditioning will ever faze me again after the 'Grease' TV experience. It was fierce. There were thousands of people auditioning in four cities. I flew from home in Minneapolis to audition in L.A. I waited in line all day. I arrived at 7 A.M. and wasn't seen until 6 P.M.

Laura Osnes

#21. I don't think actors should ever expect to get a role, because the disappointment is too great. You've got to think of things as an opportunity. An audition's an opportunity to have an audience.

Al Pacino

#22. My dad signed me up for some acting classes at a place in Honolulu, and there I got to audition for some L.A.-based talent agents. I got a few 'callbacks' and so my mom and I decided to fly to California and check it out!

Maxim Knight

#23. When I go to audition for voiceovers, I do dress as if I'm going to an on-camera audition because that's my way of showing that I do care and it means something to me.

Kether Donohue

#24. I was living in Evanston, Illinois and I was taking theater classes down the street, and our theater school was kind of affiliated with an agency, and so I went on one audition for whatever that movie was, 'My Stepmother is an Alien' or whatever it was, and 'Roseanne' was my second audition.

Lecy Goranson

#25. My agent called me and said, "You have an audition for James Bond. They're looking for the girl." And I told him, "Listen, it's all in English. I'm not an actress. I'm not going to go." He thought I was kidding with him.

Gal Gadot

#26. I've been fortunate to get involved with 'Short Term 12.' I was just a young teenager on the Internet, clicking on anything that had the word 'actor' in it. One day, someone called me in for a movie audition.

Keith Stanfield

#27. I've done a movie called 'Lemonade Mouth' for Disney Channel, which was fun to do. I actually got discovered through an open casting call where anyone could audition.

Blake Michael

#28. Like every audition I go on, I do my best, but after that, I let it go because, you know, the rejection rate is so great in Hollywood, and I can only control what I do in the audition, and after that it's up to somebody else.

Ian Ziering

#29. And after every audition I booked, my parents would buy me a Barbie, so that was it for me: You got a Barbie, and you got to hang out with friends. And I thought it was just the best thing ever.

Chelan Simmons

#30. I was involved with my theater program in high school, and I was involved in a festival where I could audition for a lot of different schools.

Josh Dallas

#31. I had done another show called 'United States of Cars,' which was a pilot that didn't get picked up. And they said, 'You know, we're doing 'Top Gear,' and would you like to meet the guys?' It was the wild - most wild audition I ever had because I never went to a studio or a producer's office.

Adam Ferrara

#32. To me an audition is 30 crazed people in a room waiting to be axed.

Kathie Lee Gifford

#33. I'm always nervous doing auditions - to be honest, I hate it. I always envy the actors who are so cool and cold-blooded when they go in for an audition, especially if it's for a part that you would really love to play.

Daniel Bruhl

#34. I had never picked up a basketball before. I went through a grueling audition process. It was almost as if I was learning to walk. It would be like teaching somebody to dance ballet for a role.

Sanaa Lathan

#35. My intention with The Soup was to hopefully follow in the footsteps of past hosts, like Greg Kinnear. The pedigree of that show was really good and if it could just get me into some of those audition rooms I've always wanted to get into that I could not get into, then I would be very happy.

Joel McHale

#36. I'm never offered any sort of roles. I need to audition in a typically lengthy process to receive roles.

Dylan O'Brien

#37. As we begin to see where we have been absent from life, increasing possibilities audition for our approval.

Stephen Levine

#38. I had been working predominantly and steadily as a dancer, so after awhile, you don't have to audition. I was just in that world, and I had certain goals I wanted to reach, but I definitely always wanted to keep going and challenge myself and become an actor.

Kenny Wormald

#39. I never went on an audition - when they were really looking at everybody.

Joan Chen

#40. It's funny because when I first met with Carmen, she said, "Have you ever thought about doing TV?" And I was like, "No, not really, but I'd audition for TV." And she said, "That's where the roles are for women now. That's where you can go and get a really great part."

Eve Hewson

#41. The reality of our business is that for every actor who's rolled up his tent and given up and gone home, the next day you hear about some shoe salesman at Macy's who had this audition and now he's Harrison Ford. There's always that carrot out there in our business.

Scott Bakula

#42. I think it wasn't the Cirque du Soleil audition that was my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it's Rory.

Wendy S. Marcus

#43. The wonderful drama teacher at my high school, Barbara Patterson, saw me standing in the hall and told me I should audition for 'West Side Story.' I guess she thought I looked like a gang member.

Gary Sinise

#44. Occasionally I will audition for a big overseas movie, but that's it.

Nicole Trunfio

#45. That's the best way to audition for anything: When your back-up plan is your dream, you know?

David Lee

#46. I need work. I still audition for work. I don't get offered things out of nowhere. I have to work hard, still, and I get a lot of rejections. It just goes on and on.

Bojana Novakovic

#47. I've certainly auditioned for big budget studio films. I don't know if it's because there's so much money involved, but a lot of times the pressure overwhelms me and engulfs me. I end up falling apart in the audition.

Jason Ritter

#48. 'Cheers' was great. They paired me up with Shelley Long on this tiny bar set for the final audition. That was my first really big one, and we just clicked instantly - I still think I got the part because of Shelley.

Ted Danson

#49. My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.

Emilia Clarke

#50. I don't think I had a script on 'King Kong.' But usually you read a script and then you go and audition for it. It's rare when there's no script. I sort of like the latter better, because I'm more successful at it.

Kyle Chandler

#51. I didn't audition for the part! The role was offered to me, and I was so excited to be a part of 'The Haunting Hour.' It is such a cool show and it was so much fun shooting the 'Intruders.'

Willow Shields

#52. I've been very lucky and been able to work, as an actress, but I'm definitely a working actress. I get a script, I audition, and then I pray.

Laura Haddock

#53. If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn't think you could do.

Peter Sarsgaard

#54. They wanted to audition people for the Middle East correspondent on 'The Daily Show.' They wanted to hire somebody ethnic for that slot. Helms had left, Cordry had left, and they felt that they needed an ethnic face. So, I went in and auditioned, and I got the job.

Aasif Mandvi

#55. As a boy soprano in the high school choir, I later sang a solo during the carol service at Canterbury Cathedral, but I was too young to secure the Freddy Eynsford-Hill role in our production of 'My Fair Lady' - and far too timid to have thought to audition for it.

Hamish Bowles

#56. If you go for an audition, you have a character description, and for the women, it's always about being beautiful, sexy. And for the men it's more about the character than how he appears physically. That annoys me.

Birgitte Hjort Sorensen

#57. If it's a good audition, whether or not I think I'm going to get the part, I do always say yes to going.

Krysten Ritter

#58. I didn't want to do 'Casino Royale' when they told me to audition. I said no. Then they sent me the script, and I thought it was actually very interesting - and I had no other work at the time.

Eva Green

#59. I've gotten jobs that I think I've done the worst audition I ever did, and I got the job. I've done the best audition I've ever done in my entire life, and I haven't gotten the job.

Lin Shaye

#60. When you go to an audition, don't hang on to it because no matter how well you feel it went or how badly, you just never know what the outcome is going to be.

Daniela Ruah

#61. My very first audition was on the lot of Paramount, and I was put on tape and it was very nerve-racking. I think it was about 15 pages.

Hailee Steinfeld

#62. Bruce Norris came in twice to audition for 'The Corrections' and subsequently spent many months negotiating every point in a four-year agreement to appear in the show.

Scott Rudin

#63. I'd done two years' worth of extra work, and all my friends who I would go on auditions with went to school for acting. These were kids who knew when they were 14 years old that this was what they wanted to do with their lives, and they prepared for it, and they're getting canned at every audition.

Michelle Rodriguez

#64. I used to audition like crazy - I would go on a hundred before I got anything. It took me a long time to get any jobs at all. It was hard until I booked 'Galaxy Quest,' and then it started to get easier.

Missi Pyle

#65. I didn't have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you're rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You're behind the eight ball when you go in there.

Robert De Niro

#66. I wish I knew that when I go in for an audition and I don't get the part, it actually doesn't have to do with me on a personal level.

Eliza Coupe

#67. I told my agents that I didn't want to go on the audition. But as that was happening I called my mom, who has been watching the show from the beginning, and my mom said, 'It's the coolest show. You have to go.'

Mary Lynn Rajskub

#68. I started writing and acting in these little plays and then I was discovered by Dustin Hoffman. He got me my first audition for a film he was in, called 'I Heart Huckabees.'

Jonah Hill

#69. I've had so many bad auditions! I tell people all the time, there's differences, what makes an audition good or what makes an audition bad. Sometimes you're just off, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

Jessie Usher

#70. Personally, I need to learn every word on the page before I go in and audition. I have not mastered the skill of holding pages in my hand and acting with pages in my hand. I find that every time I have to look at the page it takes me completely out of the scene.

Freddy Rodriguez

#71. I just kind of feel like it's my choice to do what I want to do. And my agent, he's totally with it. He tells me, 'You can turn down any audition you don't want to.'

Luke Benward

#72. I was homeschooled until I was 14, and then when I was 14, I began attending college. Mom was not playing about that education. She always said, "Acting is a privilege not a priority. Education is the priority. If you're not bringing home As and Bs, you can't go on the audition."

Aldis Hodge

#73. The first audition I ever went on, I was accompanied by my mother at the instruction of my father. 'You have to learn how to take rejection if you really want to be an actor,' he said. He had to eat his own words. I got the job.

Michele Lee

#74. When I was younger, my dad was making a music video for a band in Montreal. I was goofing around and being a ham. An agent was there and she was telling me, 'Hey, do you think you'd want to go out on auditions?' I was like, 'Yeah, what's an audition? Sure, I'll do it.'

Vanessa Lengies

#75. Everybody I meet in public seems to want to audition for me. If I ask a guy what time it is, he'll sing it to me.

Johnny Carson

#76. When you get called to come in and audition for Tarantino, it's incredibly exciting.

Jennifer Jason Leigh

#77. I wasn't a dancer learning to play Baby Houseman. I was Baby Houseman learning to play a dancer. I was someone who'd never done any Latin dance. I'd taken jazz classes and ballet growing up in New York, so I had dance in me, and I knew I loved it, but I'd never done a dance audition.

Jennifer Grey

#78. There are more things to worry about in the world than a messed-up audition. It's out of your hands. So often, it's not down to acting abilities but something an actor has no control over. So go in, be prepared, do your job, and go and enjoy the rest of your day.

Gregg Sulkin

#79. My auntie and uncle live in Inglewood, and I used to stay with them when I would come to L.A. to audition for pilot season and other things like that.

Shameik Moore

#80. Not that I'm in the stage of my career where they're offering me parts in 'The Revenant,' but I try very hard to go through the audition process because I feel like I learn quite a lot about the character and the people I'm going to work with.

Dominic Sherwood

#81. The Professional Children's School, it's for professional kids, so if you wanted to ditch, you could just write, Audition on a note and leave. I didn't really like school all that much.

Kieran Culkin

#82. As for 'Supernatural,' I had seen many episodes and enjoyed the show before my audition.

Julie McNiven

#83. One of the first auditions I had in New York was for a commercial where I had to go in and audition to be a snake charmer ... It was either some bank commercial or something where they wanted a guy charming a snake ... I remember they wanted to know if I actually knew how to snake charm.

Aasif Mandvi

#84. ('Mad Men') was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened.

Rich Sommer

#85. 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.

Michael Fassbender

#86. It doesn't matter how smart you are; to audition for 'Jeopardy,' you just have to luck out and know what they're asking you that day.

Drew Carey

#87. I wanted to act when I was young. When I was 12, I asked the head of English at my school, 'Can I audition?' and he said, 'What would we want you for?' And I remember going, 'Oh yeah. Why would they want me?'

Alison Moyet

#88. Go find very early versions of things: the first TV pilot of a later-successful TV show; early audition tapes by famous actors; early demos by famous musicians. Focus on these early examples, not what they became over the next 20 years. Remember that what you're doing will constantly improve.

Derek Sivers

#89. I always get a little uppity when I hear the phrase 'TV actor.' It's like saying you're a magazine reporter. I was in the theater for ten years before I ever had a TV audition.

Eric McCormack

#90. I think that dancing has helped or prepared me, in a number of different ways, for the film industry, especially with controlling your nerves when you walk into an audition because you're on stage from a young age.

Mia Wasikowska

#91. See, some people politely encourage their tone-deaf friends to sing. Some people even convince them to go on live television and audition for national competitions. But me? I am not that friend.

Sarah Ockler

#92. Even before my audition, there were several pages missing from my script because those bits were so unbelievably secret not even I was allowed to see them.

Ian Hart

#93. When I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State after Grinnell, I joined the moribund remnants of the Actor's Workshop, until I saw Kay Hayward and Sandy Archer in the San Francisco Mime Troupe and drove down that day to audition. The rest is history.

Peter Coyote

#94. I went into the 'Idol' audition with no expectations; that's just the kind of person I am. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't hurt so badly, you know? But once I made it past the first round, and the second, and third - I started to realize, 'Maybe my goals and dreams really are attainable.'

Crystal Bowersox

#95. My first audition was an open call and I had no picture and no resume - that's how clueless I was. I just thought I could show up.

Adepero Oduye

#96. I remember preparing for my audition on the plane to L.A. - I was drawing all these weird vampire pictures and I am sure the gorgeous ladynext to me thought I was very odd.

Lucy Fry

#97. I love auditioning. Since 'The Notebook' and 'Wedding Crashers,' I don't have to audition anymore, and I miss it. You get to show your interpretation of the character. I get nervous when I don't audition. What if they hate what I want to do?

Rachel McAdams

#98. Pilot season is always crazy because you audition for a million things, and really, in the end, it's not up to you.

Janina Gavankar

#99. My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act. I like having to audition. It's nice to do rehearsals. But it's with an audience that you get to love it!

Jeffrey Tambor

#100. I know what it's like to audition, so it's important that everybody who auditions, even if I know right off they're not right for it, has a good experience. So I'll never just have someone do one pass at it and say "Thank you".

John Cameron Mitchell