I believe that no one can teach you how to act, but schools do give you an environment to make mistakes, to learn techniques and to learn professionalism.
School is very important; it was very important for me. It gave me an enormous amount of confidence, especially at Yale where we were dealing with all the classics. In dealing with the classics, you are dealing with the very best.
I really appreciate an actor who has paid their dues and who has learned hard knocks and has been rewarded in the end.
My whole experience into the sitcom world, it was, like, "This is like theater, this is like film... This is a hybrid of everything I love to do. A live audience and rehearsals and... more food!"
If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience.
We watch so many TV shows and movies about jaded or corrupt policemen, we forget people join the police force to do good, and they really care about that.
I'd love to teach theatre arts.
I really admire actors who have time, because time is really the greatest luxury for an actor to live with a character, to develop a walk and a talk, or to listen to tape if you're playing a real character. But without time you're really just forced to make quick choices and move on and hope that the spaghetti sticks against the wall.
Bringing humility to the material and to the world and to the talent that was present, that's the true formula for success. When people are allowed to bring their best and you have a director who's not afraid to go in a certain way because he doesn't have an answer all the time... It is such a beautiful lesson and a beautiful experience.
The truth is, my father stopped bothering me after Stigmata, because I got to play a priest. That fulfilled his dream. The cop thing was a little overdone to him because my brother was already a police officer.
