Wentworth Miller Quotes

My first gig in the business was a guest star on ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ so I’m neck deep in sci-fi. It’s been a very good genre to me.

You have to love what you do, and you have to need it like you need air. And there’s nothing else that would give me the same degree of satisfaction as acting, which is why I can’t walk away from it.

A great book provides escapism for me. The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs.

This role is more visible, and I grew up without a lot of that sort of modeling so I’m relieved and proud to have done this film.

Everyone has their challenges.

My character in ‘Prison Break’ needs to be formidable. In reality, I’m not very tough at all.

Acting was something I needed like air. It wasn’t something I could walk away from.

I have very high expectations of myself. I’m a very competitive person but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be and if that means that I’m eventually better than everyone else then so be it.

I’ve never seen American Idol but I am grateful to them. That show is one of Fox’s biggest moneymakers, and some of that money goes to pay for shows like Prison Break. Simon Cowell’s been signing my paychecks and for that I say thanks.

My family put a lot of emphasis on homework, so there weren’t too many comic books or video games for me, when I was growing up.

If I were to wait only for roles that clarify my racial makeup, I’d be waiting for a very, very long time.

In my career as an actor, there is a catchphrase that Scofield always says often in regards to his brother, ‘Have a little faith.’ In my own career as an actor, there were times when I was the only one who believed in myself in the face of the odds.

Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else’s standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.

Professionally speaking, the proudest moment was when I booked the ‘Human Stain.’ I knew it had Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise on board, and the director Robert Benton was an academy award winner for ‘Kramer vs Kramer.’

A racial community provides not only a sense of identity, that luxury of looking into another’s face and seeing yourself reflected back, but a sense of security and support.

It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult.

I’ve never tried writing at a coffeehouse. I just know instinctively it’s not for me.

I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.

You only cry for help if you believe there is help to cry for.

I didn’t come to Hollywood to get on magazine covers or start my Porsche collection or to enjoy that kind of lifestyle, to go to the right parties and meet the right people.

I’m very pleased with being a part of the Bean Pole family. It’s a relationship that makes sense to me. I’m very pleased to have my name associated with Bean Pole Jeans.

I’m hoping that what I am or what I’m not ethnically doesn’t limit me in anyone else’s eyes. I guarantee you it doesn’t in mine.

I have to laugh internally when I’m asked in interviews what nightspots I like to hit. I just don’t have answers… so sometimes I make them up.

I revise obsessively. It’s important to me to have a clean page.

I certainly learned how to break down a text at Princeton, which helps me break down a script – or at least that’s the line I feed my parents when they start wondering where all that good money went.

Entertainers are there to entertain. They aren’t there to teach your children the lessons that you haven’t bothered to teach them at home yourself.

Nobody’s ever asked me to pay for a meal before I’ve eaten it, I’ve never been pulled over just because I was driving the wrong kind of car in the wrong kind of area at the wrong time of night.

When I’ve had my periods of unemployment, I’ll get these e-mails from my father: ‘I’ve read that the LAPD has a reservist program. Perhaps that’s something you’d be interested in taking a look at.’

It’s the way the business works, you’re not just an actor, you’re a diplomat and a publicist and a politician, and there are certain expectations.

I’m one of those actors who’s going to have to create a space for themselves. It’s very easy to be the young Tom Cruise, because Hollywood knows what to do with you. But if you’re someone who’s bringing someone slightly left of center to the table, you’re not a sure thing.

Confidence is at the root of so many attractive qualities, a sense of humor, a sense of style, a willingness to be who you are no matter what anyone else might think or say and it’s true, I do have a certain fondness for women that have dark hair.

There has to be a measure of faith. That’s what this business is all about: trusting in something that may never show up, that you have no concrete proof of.

I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does, which is try to find scripts written for white actors – or Jodie Foster, who reads scripts for male actors.

I think what you learn, working on a film or TV set, is how to tune certain things out. You’ve got 60-100 people swirling around you, each of them with a very important job to do.

You’re confronted with the quandary: do I grind things to a halt? Ideally you would, but I have better things to do than educate people.

Unfortunately, I’m allergic to all animals and even some people.

My father is black and my mother is white. Therefore, I could answer to either, which kind of makes me a racial Lone Ranger, caught between two communities.

I’m a very competitive person, but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be, and if that means that I’m eventually better than everyone else, then so be it. But I don’t go around comparing and contrasting myself with other actors if I can help it. It’s also, I think, the key to my success.

I wanted to be involved in TV and film in some capacity, so a compromise, because acting seemed unrealistic, and so risky, was to get into the production side. And it was a really fortunate, smart move looking back on it, because it gave me perspective on another side of the business.

I surrender the idea of having some kind of control over the arc of my career a lot of the time because you never know what tomorrow’s going to bring.