Bruce McGill

There's a cumulative effect to getting good parts as a freelance actor, because you're only as good as your last job, and you have to keep going out and getting them. Unless you're part of the finance structure, by which I mean a bankable star, which I never was and never will be.

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters.

One of the defense mechanisms I have for the difficulties in the business, one of which is rejection, is that if I do the work, I go in, and I'm prepared and I audition and they don't hire me, I'm always just amazed, thinking, 'Wow! For that money, they could've had Bruce McGill, and they didn't take me? I just think that's amazing.'

I don't collect the way other people do. Some people collect rare guitars, like, 'I have a '54 Strat worth $50,000.' And I don't collect the way Nash does. Nash has Duane Allman's guitar and Johnny Cash's guitar. I bought guitars because they sounded good. I played them, they sounded unbelievably good, and I couldn't resist.