Actors are like Swiss Army knives - we're ready to use any lever at any moment. But I learned long ago that, unfortunately, this industry only sees the one thing sticking out that they know us from, and that's the only thing they can imagine.
Most people know me from 'The Office,' where I played a guy who grunted out three or four words an episode and was kind of a knucklehead, and so I think it's surprising for people to see me do something like this. But Shakespeare is what I grew up wanting to do.
I had to learn to trust people, and I realized that success was going to be born in hiring really bright people - very self-motivated, very able to make good judgment calls day in and day out.
Every actor starts out saying, 'I can play anything in the world: I'm only 25, but I can be a man 70 years old. I'll put on a gray wig and do it.' But nobody hires you for that. You have to play yourself on the screen.
I've never been naturally fashion conscious. I'm the kind of person who sees a whole outfit in a magazine, runs out and buys it but looks like a clown.
There are some days when I think for sure there are so many other stronger Christians than me out there.
I was a good sight reader and I could sing two or three of these jingles a day. An orchestra would come in for half an hour, and then the singers would come in and knock 'em out, and go on to the next one. I was the voice of Budweiser and Almond Joy.
Painful events leave scars, true, but it turns out they're largely erasable. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroanatomist who had a stroke that obliterated her memory, described the event as losing '37 years of emotional baggage.'
The Internet is going to have a bigger impact on content creators than the television ever had. The reason why that's the case is that suddenly you're able to tell stories 24/7 in the home, out of the home, in every room of the home. A television screen can be in your pocket through a smartphone.
In my experience, with very few exceptions - I am, as it happens, one of the exceptions - the one thing that most editors don't want to do is edit. It's not nearly as conducive to a successful career as having lunch out with important agents or going to meetings where you get noticed.
I live three blocks away from the beach, so every day I walk down to the beach to run or go swimming. Hiking is a big one for me - so long as it's something where I'm not thinking about working out, like in a contrived class or the gym.
It's hard to mix with a crowd when you're walking down the hallway and everybody else is a foot shorter. I remember hanging out with my friends, like at the mall, and thinking people were staring at me and talking about me. It made me turn inside myself. I became more shy and quiet.
I never felt like someone who was boyish and coming to terms with asking girls out or anything like that, which was what 'The Big Steal' and 'Spotswood' were about. But I guess that's the impression I left on people.
The thing a player has to ask himself: 'Do you want to choose winning over standing out?' Dwyane Wade made that choice, and I don't think he gets enough credit.
That's the great thing about how 'SVU' works. They work with so many Broadway actors, they are very used to getting us out in time for the show.
I have battled clinical depression and have come out of the other side. I've been free of it for many years now. Finding the place in my own mind and heart to win that battle without using medication, finding the place within myself where I could be alive again, that was one of the biggest challenges I've faced.
For me, comedy starts as a spew, a kind of explosion, and then you sculpt it from there, if at all. It comes out of a deeper, darker side. Maybe it comes from anger, because I'm outraged by cruel absurdities, the hypocrisy that exists everywhere, even within yourself, where it's hardest to see.
I think any player at any position their rookie year, they're trying to figure out how to process all the information we give them, how to process what the defense is doing and then actually physically play the game and the position that they're playing.
Your competitive juice, your love of the game, it's in you. It's hard to get out.
Without the U.S. leading the way in trade negotiations, we likely will see irreversible damage to our environment and widespread abuse of labor and human rights, all while we lose out on the opportunity to expand our economy and create jobs.
I write first drafts by hand, often out of the house somewhere, and then, when I've got a draft, type it up and let it sit, sometimes for a long time, and then when I'm ready, I work on revision.
What can you do if a part of it is uphill? You can't work out another route. You've just got to run the one they give you. But they tell me London is a nice course. Even the cobbles, I hope, are not very much of a problem for me.
Basically, a manager's job is to make other people more productive. What's one really good way to do that? Do the work that is getting in their way. Which means find out what kind of important work your developers dislike the most, and do it for them.
Nothing's out of the realm. I think '24' has always keyed into that.
We've got to take confrontation out of the centre of politics. With fighting, no one wins; with dialogue, everyone wins.
Credits in your PayPal account are really just USD-backed - they are not a unique currency themselves. Other 'digital currencies,' such as Facebook Credits, can be created out of nothing and without limit, so they are not serious money.
I'm not afraid to eat breakfast at three in the morning. As a kid, I used to go to bed at 8 P.M., wake up at 1 A.M. when my grandma would cook me breakfast, and then I'd pass out again.
This issue of border security is not about, about ethnicity. I sit there on occasion with 10 or 12 sheriffs from my district, many of which are Democrats with last names like Reyes, with last names like Herrera and Lucio. And they are crying out for border security as well. So again, this is not an issue about being anti-Mexican.
When we're playing, when we're really, really going... you're just in the moment. You're not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, or anything else. The brain gets out of the way. Your body just does what it knows how to do, and it's just... it's like a religion.
I was a musician and did moderately well at that. I made an enjoyable living as a very young man, but I think as I became more comfortable and knowledgeable about myself and what I wanted, I moved into acting. I came to it rather late - later than most. I just really wanted to try my hand, and thankfully, it worked out for the most part.
I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.
Seeing off the new ball is important for me. I know that once I do that, the only way I could get out could be from my own mistake.
Your ability to adapt to failure, and navigate your way out of it, absolutely 100 percent makes you who you are.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I was straight out of grad school, and I didn't have a single credit to my name. I knew one person in town - another actor whose name is John Billingsley. I just had to audition and audition and audition. I was plugging away for 15 years. So I earned my stripes!
One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.
I started out fighting before I was acting, actually, then got hurt and got into the acting.
