I've always had a natural affiliation with nature. If I wasn't an actor, I'd be some sort of biologist working in the field in Africa or something.
T.V.s weird because its both the greatest gig as an actor potentially because it can be all this work for all this time, but there are so many question marks at every stage of the process.
I was on the verge of quitting… The Acting Center actually saved me as an actor.
Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life.
Even though I do a more traditional type of being funny on television, I still know a lot of comedians and stand-ups and improv actors.
As an actor, it's always fun when you're able to feel like there's freedom to explore things and try out jokes and be funny.
I love Hugh Jackman. Love Hugh Jackman. He's the coolest. He's one of the coolest actors I've ever worked with, and I'll do anything with him.
It's a neat experience to go from the blank page to an actor elevating it to the audience understanding it - the full life of that is why I became a writer.
We were all inspired by him as an actor and his iconography and thought, if we get somebody like Laurence Fishburne, we can tell a much more sophisticated, complicated version of Jack Crawford than we'd seen before as this large and in-charge and in-control guy, who is unflappable.
That's the reason you want to become a star as an actor, to be able to have more control of your destiny.
I appreciate my role as an actor much more after I direct because it's just easier.
The only thing that we as actors really can control is to be able to say 'yes' or 'no' to the material.
Being a day player, period, is one of the hardest things you can do as an actor.
When actors first come up, you're auditioning for everything - you're trying to sniff it out like a pig with a truffle and you would do anything!
The hardest work that actors have done, including myself, is on poorly written scripts. And when you first start out you do anything. I did a lot of crap. I did more crap than I can tell you. But you did it because you needed the money. You have to pay for your pictures and resumes, and classes and insurance and food like everybody else. In those days if it was crap you just didn't put it on your resume.
Part of an actor's job is to draw up a back story.
My goal has always been to be a working actor.
As a director you come in and tell the actors how good they are.
Actors, writers, directors - that triumvirate of creativity - we have to rely and trust each other to be able to get to the final product.
As an actor, you're never busy enough.
I wanted to be an actor, and when that day happened that was sort of like the end. Now let it take me.
Gay actors have been playing straight since Euripides.
An actor is an instrument. One needs to control them.
I got to work with Dustin Hoffman on a film called 'Billy Bathgate.' I got to work with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn and Bob Zemeckis on 'Death Becomes Her.' There are still a few actors out there that I would like to work with.
He was so good at everything he did. You can't call Ronnie Barker a comedian. He was an actor, and a great writer.
