When I started working, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, in that I was just wandering around, hoping that I could succeed. Then after I got a little under my belt, it took me about 25 years to feel like I knew what I was doing.

In 2003 to endow the James Garner Chair in the School of Drama he donated $500000 half of a pledged $1 million for the first endowed position at the drama school. After working at several jobs he disliked at sixteen Garner joined the United States Merchant Marine near the end of World War II. Starting with the 1974 season Garner appeared as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files.

James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7 1928) is an American film and television actor one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in more than fifty movies including The Great Escape (1963) Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964) Blake Edwards' Victor Victoria (1982) Murphy's Romance (1985) for which he received an Academy Award nomination and The Notebook (2004). These included his roles as Bret Maverick in the popular 1950s western-comedy series Maverick; Jim Rockford in the popular 1970s detective drama The Rockford Files; and the father of Katey Sagal's character on 8 Simple Rules following the death of John Ritter.