I'll just put it this way: I've struggled enough as a working actor - and, most of the times, a not working actor - to know that anytime you are working is a blessing.

Leave me to the thing I love. I love acting. But being called 'the greatest living actress' - a designation not even my mother would sanction - is the opposite of good or valuable or useful. It is a curse for a working actor.

At some point, you're just happy to be a working actor, but to be able to do it with people you really love and enjoy spending time with, it's just such a rare thing. You hear so many horror stories.

People call me a movie star. If you're in the business, a movie star is someone who can make a film bankable. My name and $6 million will make a $6 million movie. I'm a working actor. Because I started late, I had a very short run as a leading man, and my films didn't make money in America.

I don't want to be known as someone who is deliberately trying to do things that are not commercial! That is not a good reputation to have when you're trying to be a working actor.

When you're a working actor and you're happy to be one, you can't focus all your energy on acting because you will go crazy. You have to focus as much energy as you can away from yourself.

I'm a working actor. I don't make my own work, so it's the opportunities that are presented to me.

I'm not one of these million-dollar actors. I have always been just a working actor. I probably work more than I would like to.

I love to read scripts. But I am very happy right now to say that I am a working actor. In this town of Los Angeles, the phrase 'I'm an actor' is overrated. So, I like to say, 'I'm a working actor.'

I've been a working actor for many years, but it's not always been successful for me. I certainly struggled in the past.

I'm a normal working actor - just the way I want it. I have never been the one to want the fame of everything. The thing for me is to inspire people and do something I love.

I'm a working actor, so I do pretty much whatever comes along because it's my job.

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way, that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.

My old manager of the Irish National Theatre said 'Don't worry about being a star, just worry about being a working actor. Just keep working.' I think that's really good advice.

All I really wanted to be was a working actor.

I've always just tried to continue to be a working actor and let the work speak for itself as opposed to promoting myself as someone who needs to be in everybody's living room.

Well, I think probably when I first got in the business, I wasn't thinking of being strictly a character actor. But I knew I wanted to be a working actor, and as the years have gone on, I just naturally evolved into that. Because, y'know, I'm not a leading guy. Never was.

When I left Maine, I always wanted to be a working actor. I never cared too much about being the star. I just wanted to do the work and get on with it.

Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity.

My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood.