Top 50 Hank Azaria Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There’s no experience like on-the-job training.”

— Hank Azaria

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Funny Work Quotes

2. “Literally, I see my writing as transcription – a transcription of what I see, hear, think, live.”

— Hank Azaria

3. “I wore a thong and a bra and a wig. Those things hurt. I mean, thongs? Like, they dig in. It takes a tough man to be a woman.”

— Hank Azaria

4. “I did a lot of theater in college, and I knew that not many people make it, but I just figured, ‘Well, I really want to try acting while I’m young, and I don’t ever want to look back and say that I never gave it a try.’ I fully figured I’d be back in grad school – probably for psychology.”

— Hank Azaria

5. “I was hedging my bets by the time I got to college. I was interested in drama and journalism and psychology.”

— Hank Azaria

6. “I’m very happy I get to keep working – it’s an insanely fortunate thing.”

— Hank Azaria

7. “Godzilla’s a monster for the ’90s. He’s been working out.”

— Hank Azaria

8. “Once someone is in your family orbit, there’s a mutual responsibility, and whatever happens to them happens to you.”

— Hank Azaria

9. “You know those award shows. The cliche is that it’s an honor just to be nominated, but that happens to be true. Whoever wins it in the end, I don’t know, sometimes it feels arbitrary. Sometimes it feels like it’s deserving.”

— Hank Azaria

10. “I love acting, but I want to explore other things.”

— Hank Azaria

11. “Guys will definitely settle for women who get the joke. But a woman who can make you laugh? It’s not high on a guy’s must list. Perhaps it should be.”

— Hank Azaria

12. “You have to always physicalize, when you do animation recording. Otherwise, you won’t get the performance right.”

— Hank Azaria

13. “I joke that my niche in Hollywood has been naked foreigners.”

— Hank Azaria

14. “In gay culture hookups are a way of escaping your class.”

— Hank Azaria

15. “I ask for a lot of advice from different fathers – all kinds of dads.”

— Hank Azaria

16. “I tend to not watch things that are current. And then if everybody swears it’s amazing then I’ll like watch the whole series in a weekend.”

— Hank Azaria

17. “In my cranky old age, I actually prefer recording alone now, on ‘The Simpsons,’ for example, because I find that the director can just focus on what I’m doing and I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times, when I record with a group, I’ll stay after class for another hour or two.”

— Hank Azaria

18. “Women are, in general, less shallow visually. If their man gains 10, 20 pounds, they don’t care as much. But I’ve been with women over the years when my weight fluctuated, and they’re definitely more interested physically when I am in really great shape.”

— Hank Azaria

19. “I guess I’m used to seeing actors, but rock musicians still hold a special magic for me.”

— Hank Azaria

20. “Being funny with a funny voice is more my comfort zone, a broader character that I try to humanize, a kind of silly or wacky persona that I try to fill in.”

— Hank Azaria

21. “I’ve been divorced and I had to get back out there be single again and do some of that in the genuinely miserable state where you really do wonder what the hell is going on. And you feel like trying to have casual conversation with someone you don’t know on the surface of the moon or something.”

— Hank Azaria

22. “When you’re on a series that’s been cancelled, there’s a little bit of a stink on you.”

— Hank Azaria

23. “It’s not really difficult to go from one voice into the next. It’s like asking you to sing a line of Happy Birthday and then Goodnight Irene – assuming you know the words to both those songs.”

— Hank Azaria

24. “I’ve been doing silly voices since I was a child.”

— Hank Azaria

25. “I’ve done literally 100, 150 different characters.”

— Hank Azaria

26. “A self-help book can’t really address a problem unless it’s individualized. It’s not going to talk about a globalized problem.”

— Hank Azaria

27. “Even trying it as an actor, I never thought I’d actually make it.”

— Hank Azaria

28. “I’ve met a lot of rock stars when they come to The Simpsons, and almost every one of them I get really freaked out.”

— Hank Azaria

29. “Historically, there would always be people among the general population who had family members, friends, cousins who’d done time or who’d been in prison.”

— Hank Azaria

30. “Politics is topical – it’s what’s happening now, and we can either respond in the present or avoid it.”

— Hank Azaria

31. “That’s a true actor’s nightmare: “Improvise in British sign language. Go.””

— Hank Azaria

32. “I don’t really remember much about the ’60s at all. You know, 1970 is the first year I remember pretty well.”

— Hank Azaria

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

33. “I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself. I felt like I shouldn’t have to audition for anything and all that. And that energy did not serve me at all.”

— Hank Azaria

34. “Just watching Jack Lemmon made me want to get into this business.”

— Hank Azaria

35. “When you do well in a movie that’s seen as really great, you’re revitalized for six weeks.”

— Hank Azaria

36. “The craft Emmys are kind of the kids table at Thanksgiving. You’re not really invited to the big dance. It’s still really, really exciting, and the statue still counts.”

— Hank Azaria

37. “As an actress, you’re living something through the duration of the play and its geography. I’ve always seen writing the same way. It’s like somehow I’m moving through the terrain of the book as a performer.”

— Hank Azaria

38. “You never know who’s going to kill you until you meet them.”

— Hank Azaria

39. “When you become deeply involved with someone, their problems become yours, and vice versa. It’s family.”

— Hank Azaria

40. “I guess for me the greatest injustice is to see people robbed of that interiority and process of association.”

— Hank Azaria

41. “I bartended for a catering company for two or three years.”

— Hank Azaria

42. “I’ve done literally 100, 150 different characters. Some of them have only appeared for a line or three. But the point is, every sound I can make has been harvested.”

— Hank Azaria

43. “It’s always impressive when talented comedians are easy laughers or generous with their laughs.”

— Hank Azaria

44. “You can’t be funny for funny’s sake. You try to get as outrageous situation as you can but it always has to be believable and based in real character motivations and what people would really do.”

— Hank Azaria

45. “I’ve always been a fan of plain writing. I hate metaphor-laden, heavily larded, lyrical writing.”

— Hank Azaria

46. “I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor. I just really, really amused myself and my friends with memorizing entire George Carlin or Steve Martin albums.”

— Hank Azaria

47. “I would love to do Broadway again.”

— Hank Azaria

48. “Association bring you into the larger world of other people and things. Not having that is a kind of prison, a prison of such a limited consciousness, of such a limited frame of reference and association.”

— Hank Azaria

49. “Women are, in general, less shallow visually. If their man gains 10, 20 pounds, they don’t care as much.”

— Hank Azaria

50. “It’s not really difficult to go from one voice into the next.”

— Hank Azaria