I felt sometimes too responsible as an actor because people promote violence or weird things that I don't want to be part of.
I learnt a lot about how to negotiate the camera: everyone had told me an actor doesn't really need to do anything on screen, but I realised that wasn't true. If you do nothing, it's boring.
I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'
I expect I should be more calloused by now, but I am so sensitive about not ever living up to anybody's worst idea about an actor who is well-known.
Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.
I'm not entirely comfortable saying I'm an actor, because it seems like a very weird, almost dorky thing to say you are.
I got to New York when I was eighteen. I was knocking around, trying to be an actor, writer, musician, whatever happened.
We had a very energetic floor manager and he was always jumping around all over the place. The director would send down messages like, Can you tell that actor to calm down?
People are really emotionally affected by actors. And it's hard to know how to behave in a way that doesn't impose or withdraw. Because everybody wants your attention. Everywhere you go, you know?
I'm an actor, not a writer. I'd be pretty annoyed if the writers tried to come in and hang over my shoulder telling me how to act, so I don't go in and tell them how to write.
There are two schools of thought: There are those actors who explain to you that they know exactly how they're going to do the part... And then there is the other method, which is to have no method at all. This is mine.
I learn something new everyday about myself as an actor, my capabilities, how far I can stretch myself, throw out emotions I never knew I had.
I think when someone becomes an actor, people say, Aw, you could see it in him when he was little. But I think you can see that quality in every little kid.
I wrote 'Actor' all on the computer. I didn't touch any instruments until I was in the studio. So while I had all these ornate arrangements, I didn't have any songs.
I'd like to be the next Oprah financially, but I'm not a TV actor. I'm not someone with an entertainment background, I'm a cop. And I'm not afraid to go anywhere and get down and dirty.
You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!
I view the whole thing as a collaboration. As an actor, I always found that to be the most freeing thing, when the director would collaborate with you, so that together you'd come up with something exponentially better.
Nothing else is as fulfilling as playing a part in which you are able to have a significant say in the creative process all the way through. How many actors get to do that? It's extremely rare.
For me, as an actor, one of the biggest fears on a TV show is getting stuck in something where you end up feeling like you're doing the same thing, every single year.
Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.
Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.
