Zach Braff: ‘You can be talented and good-looking, but acting success is still like winning the lottery’

The Scrubs and Garden State star answers your questions about working with megastars, getting his hair to look good and being brutally killed on BoJack Horseman

How do you manage not to act starstruck when directing people like Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Harrison Ford? TopTramp
That’s where my acting comes in – I pretend that I don’t know how famous they are. Every actor really wants a leader. They want someone who knows the script really well, has a plan for how the scene is going to be executed, and – in the case of comedy – knows how to make it funny. The last thing any of those guys wants is someone coming in starstruck and wide-eyed. So I use my acting skills to pretend I’m not starstruck and treat them like normal people.

Your Fake Doctors, Real Friends podcast was a real help through lockdown. You were very emotionally open and personal; it was like catching up with friends. I still think about your line that making it in acting, even if you’re talented and good-looking, is like winning the lottery. Do you think that early 00s Zach Braff would make it in the present day the way you did? KamesJ
Back then, the broadcast networks were making so many pilots, at least it was work for people. Now, I think it’s a much harder landscape to break through. I firmly believe that you can be talented and good-looking, but success is still like winning the lottery. I know plenty of brilliant actors whose lottery ticket hasn’t come up yet. I started auditioning at 14 and barely got anything for years, so I’ve always felt very lucky.

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