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Daily Inspiration Quote by Patrick Macnee

"But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter"

About this Quote

There is a quiet flex hidden in the shrug of "awful lot of work". Patrick Macnee is doing something actors learn to do as second nature: downplay the brag while still getting credit for the grind. The phrase lands as modesty, but its real function is résumé management. He is telling you he wasnt just a face attached to a cult role; he clocked in, repeatedly, across the two most mythologized labor markets in American entertainment.

Hollywood and New York arent just locations here. They are competing ideas of legitimacy. Hollywood implies scale, industry, the camera machine. New York suggests theater, seriousness, craft, the harder-to-fake aura of "real acting". By adding "for that matter", Macnee widens the frame as if the distinction barely matters, which is precisely the point: he belongs in both ecosystems. Its a way of sidestepping the old binary that treats film as glamour and stage as virtue.

The specific intent feels defensive in the way older performers often get when their careers are flattened into a single iconic image. Macnee, best known for The Avengers, spent years being remembered as a type: suave, ironic, elegantly expendable. This line pushes back against that reduction. The subtext is: dont confuse recognizability with the sum of the work. In an industry that loves origin stories and breakout moments, he insists on the unromantic truth that a career is mostly repetition, travel, and taking the next job.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Macnee, Patrick. (2026, January 16). But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-i-did-an-awful-lot-of-work-in-hollywood-and-113102/

Chicago Style
Macnee, Patrick. "But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-i-did-an-awful-lot-of-work-in-hollywood-and-113102/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"But I did an awful lot of work in Hollywood, and in New York for that matter." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-i-did-an-awful-lot-of-work-in-hollywood-and-113102/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

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Patrick Macnee (born February 6, 1922) is a Actor from United Kingdom.

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