THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia) 14 August 06 Phillips prefers snakes as co-actors (Nathan Phillips)
Never work with children and steer well clear of animals, too - these are two supposedly inflexible rules for actors.
Because if you did, the anklebiters or the critters or both, would steal the damned show.
Well, try telling that to Australian actor Nathan Phillips.
Early in his career Phillips broke both rules, and has absolutely no regrets.
Indeed, Phillips' first Hollywood film, which opens this month, is all about snakes, of the venomous kind.
Starring alongside Samuel L Jackson in Snakes on a Plane, Phillips plays a passenger on a flight where an assassin lets a crate of deadly snakes loose to try to kill a witness in protective custody.
"They (the snakes) were really easy to work with, they weren't very demanding," said Phillips of the slippery critters.
"They didn't need the director to talk to them for 20 minutes about the emotional arc of their scene.
"I have worked with many actors who have been much harder to work with."
Even so, Phillips admits he wasn't always keen on doing the film, which he describes as a "light-hearted, popcorn in the air, screaming" movie.
He had hoped his first big budget Hollywood flick would challenge him with a more serious role.
But he soon changed his mind when he knew Jackson was also in the film.
"For my first Hollywood film, I really didn't want to be doing a film where I'm looking like a stooge with fake snakes that look like socks," he said.
"But when I met the director and heard about Sam (Jackson) ... I was sold."
Phillips' fashion designer girlfriend Lexi Blake even made a cameo appearance in the film.
"She is this hot chick at the start who is surfing," he said of his girlfriend, who is about to launch her own label, Lexiland.
"So you get to see my girl in all her glory."
While Phillips acknowledges his definitely wasn't Oscar-winning performance, he reckons, tongue in cheek, that he could be up for other awards.
"Maybe it will get me an MTV Award for best scene with a snake," he joked.
But Hollywood film makers are going to be more interested in his scenes alongside Jackson - the so-called 'coolest' man in Hollywood.
Phillips said he got on well with Jackson, once he got out of the way all of his impressions of the actor from his roles in Pulp Fiction and Jungle Fever.
And it seems that Phillips has impressed the right people, because he has already made two films since Snakes on a Plane.
Phillips prefers snakes as co-actors