When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me.
I was always drawn to performing, but I never thought I could. I have no idea what I wanted to do outside of the old cowboy-or-fireman. When I was in college, I got serious about acting. I started examining history and then everything related to the theater. History, art, all the other studies, if I could link them into the theater, then it became alive for me. It just opened up my eyes.
[My mother] is the greatest hero I'll ever know because she kept us all together, she made sure we all graduated college. She always believed in us no matter what we do. My older brother Joel became an art teacher; my brother Rip ultimately became a television producer and singer and actor himself.
