However, I'm at a very comfortable place in my career and celebrity, in that I don't have to audition as extensively as I used to for roles but yet I'm not immediately recognizable.
I got a tiny part in a play, auditioned for another one and got that as well. Not only that, the first finished on the Saturday and the other started on the Monday which is like an actor's dream!
When I first got the audition for Shado, I went online and subscribed to DC Comics and read a bunch on Shado and the Yakuza, just to get to know her character better.
I was on a well-beaten path of actors - what we all call 'the Law and Order route'. I spent two years of auditioning for everything... and then 'The Wire' came up.
Even before my audition, there were several pages missing from my script because those bits were so unbelievably secret not even I was allowed to see them.
I was always singing to myself, but I never ever performed, and I never told anyone I liked to sing. So it was a definitely a new adventure going in to audition for 'Glee.'
Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it.
When you go to an audition, don't hang on to it because no matter how well you feel it went or how badly, you just never know what the outcome is going to be.
The auditioning process is one in which the actor gets very little information about almost every element of it.
I graduated from Brown in 2001, moved to New York, and spent a year and a half just looking up 'Backstage' magazine auditions and grinding.
I wish I knew that when I go in for an audition and I don't get the part, it actually doesn't have to do with me on a personal level.
My characters have to talk, or they're out. They audition in early scenes. If they can't talk, they're given less to do, or thrown out.
I ended up on 'Heroes' because I auditioned for the part like everybody else, but the writers were writing the role of Daphne, which was originally called Joy.
As an actor, when you go for auditions, there are certain roles that come along and you think, 'I really want that one,' and Prince Arthur was definitely one of those.
I've done a movie called 'Lemonade Mouth' for Disney Channel, which was fun to do. I actually got discovered through an open casting call where anyone could audition.
It's weird when auditioning for roles, because a lot of my mates go out for the same roles. You don't want to know that you're beating someone to the role.
When 'The Pacific' came around, I had to audition the old-fashioned way. It was the casting director and then the producer and then another producer and another producer and then Spielberg and Hanks.
I find the roller-coaster ride of auditioning most challenging. It's always about putting yourself out there, being rejected, and then getting back out there and trying again.
I was the first person in the world to audition for 'The Hobbit'. The casting director told me that when I went in. That's a lot of pressure, isn't it? The first person in the world.
The nice thing is that, at least in Los Angeles, I'm known as a character actor and I do auditions for other things besides just cartoon shows.
I was involved with my theater program in high school, and I was involved in a festival where I could audition for a lot of different schools.
