Success Quote by Paul Giamatti

Honesty, with a preemptive eye-roll baked in: Giamatti opens by swatting away the most predictable accusation in celebrity culture, the one that says any performer who claims to dislike attention is either lying or selling something. By admitting he likes it, he disarms the gotcha. The parenthetical "I'm an actor for God's sake" is doing a lot of work: it’s a wink at the audience and a small confession that the job is, unavoidably, tied to being seen. He’s not performing humility so much as refusing the purity test.

The real pivot is the distinction between liking attention and pursuing it as an end. In an era where fame has become a career track, "attention was never my big goal" reads as a boundary line: he’s staking identity on craft rather than clout. The subtext is a quiet rebuke of the attention economy that drags even serious actors into branding, takes, and perpetual visibility. He’s acknowledging the thrill of being noticed while rejecting the idea that recognition should dictate the work.

"I just like to work and have a good time" lands because it’s almost aggressively un-mythic. No tortured-artist pose, no sanctimony about art, just a laborer's ethos with a dash of pleasure. Coming from Giamatti - a performer associated with character roles, intellectual intensity, and anti-glamour charisma - it reads as credible: a reminder that some actors chase the next interesting part, not the next viral moment.