Television's grown up a lot. It's a little more adult, which I think is a good thing. It allows actors to tell more complex stories. I'm happy to see where it ends up.
I think good actors are born with a kind of native gift. When you study too much with an acting teacher, that gets taken away. You lose your sense of spontaneity.
The only fear I have is that I will wake up one day and nobody will allow me to do films. This is a fear every actor has.
I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out.
I have fear, always, on the set. Insecurity to the point where the first week I always think I could be fired. I think that's a fear most actors have.
A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.
When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.
I've had to deal, a lot, with my own sense of intimidation at meeting famous people - especially actors, but really any famous people.
It's not a matter of becoming a superstar. Fame and money aren't the purpose of all this. No actor's going to say, 'I don't want to be famous.' But the main purpose for doing what I'm doing is the passion in the work.
Dates with actors, finally, just seemed to me evenings of shop talk. I got sick of it after a hile. So the more famous I became, the more I narrowed down my choices.
I want to become actor not because I want money and become more famous. No I don't want that. It is not that l want stardom, I want to contribute to good cinema.
You need to develop, somehow, a huge amount of faith and confidence in yourself, because there's a lot of rejection throughout an actor's life and you have to believe in yourself more than anyone else.
The opportunity to completely become someone else and inhabit them is something that has always fascinated me greatly as an actor. With a bit of fortune, a few more of those opportunities will lie waiting for me in the future.
It's nice to establish yourself as an actor first and a singer second. Proof is such a tremendous piece of work, and I'm incredibly lucky to be a part of it. I'm sure that the musicals will happen in the future, though.
I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor financially, emotionally, egotistically.
I happen to be very good with younger actors because I have extremely vivid memories of that time of my life, and kids are just funny.
I mean I've seen 3D films so far and I think it's a long way to go before they replace actors. It's a funny thing with 3D, I haven't quite got it yet. Yet.
I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's t...
One of my favorite comedies is 'Groundhog Day' and 'Scrooged.' I love Bill Murray, and I think he's a great example of an actor who is funny.
If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
I have a really dry sense of humor. I don't think it's funny when people wink at the camera. That's more of an actor thing, just committing to whatever the thing is.
