I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did.
And I think I'm an adrenaline junkie, and there's nothing that will spike your adrenaline more than sitting in a theater and listen to an audience react to something you've written.
My parents wanted me to be a Baptist minister. I was a youth minister in my church when I was still in college. And I was in a lot of theater in high school, and at Northwestern.
I want what's mine. I see other actors who are doing very interesting roles, and I just want to continue to do things that are interesting, and things that people will go see in theaters.
Ultimately, it has been a struggle- but I was in Minneapolis and Austin a couple of weeks ago, sitting in theaters with complete strangers watching this weird movie that Kirk and I thought up and I was excited to be making film.
I'm a kid who did stock and summer youth theater where we'd put up two shows and you had no rehearsal. I've also understudied, where I've had to go on with no rehearsal.
Before my acting took off, I drove a truck for an inventory company throughout the northeast, but my favorite non-acting job was working in the box office at the Public Theater.
I still feel like a novice when it comes to classical theater, but I don't ever want to become comfortable with anything. The greatest creativity comes from being nervous and uncomfortable.
Coming off of 'Book of Mormon,' I had a lot of opportunities. I didn't want to do TV, actually. I really wanted to get paid nothing and keep doing theater at all costs.
Theater people say you are either a comedian or a tragedian, and I'm a tragedian. And the vexing, dark characters, the ones where I don't understand their pain or their anguish, they are the characters that appeal to me.
I love theater. I love the idea that you can transform, become somebody else, and look at life with a completely new perspective. I love the idea that people will sit in one room for a couple of hours and listen.
By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10.
In theater, you're allowed to take your time and sit in a role for a month before you have to share it with anybody. In film and TV, you have to just kind of show up and be ready to do that, which, to me, is very strange and crazy.
I did nothing but theater until, I guess, '99. I was all the way through college the first time that I had stepped in front of a camera. And it's weird; it's definitely a transition.
'Scandal' has been, for me, the most consistent time I've ever logged in front of a camera. I grew up in the theater, and I feel very confident and comfortable on the stage and in front of a live audience, but the camera is a very different medium.
Mr. Universe: There is no news. There is only the truth of the signal. What I see. And, there's the puppet theater the Parliament jesters foist on the somnambulant public.
I used to say when I was working in the theater that if I ever had five seasons of a hit TV show I'd never have to worry about money and wouldn't have to do anything I didn't want to do.
My criteria for doing theater has always been slightly different than my criteria with movies, in that there are a lot of reasons to do films, having to do with location, money, and first and foremost having to do with script and role and director.
Except here it's more power, more energy, younger and also in Europe it's still not only entertainment. Theater or films are looked at as a moral institution. That's why maybe they're so poetic. Here it's clear entertainment.
In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple ...
I happen to love working in cinema, but the theater is always there... you know, and I would never shut the door on it. Even though it's been quite a bit of time since I've done a play, last one was in New York.
