Interview Highlights
Days are filled with things that happen. And you have to sort of determine whether you're going to make choices for things to happen or just react to things that are happening around you. And why not choose to go do things. You're not going to see art unless you go to the museum.
Actor · Comedian · Filmmaker · Magician · Singer · Writer
And I remember I was just the whitest kid ever from small-town New Mexico in this big city of Los Angeles…I'm sitting there watching this play about a lower middle-class African-American man in Pittsburgh and his family. And I just remember being so moved, moved to tears at 13, 14 years old…And it was so moving. And I did think even back then, I recognized the impact that the theater can have on someone that isn't even anything like what they're like.
Actor and Director
If you are thinking about too much, you're probably not doing it right. Some nights you do it and you're just like, that just felt like it was ten minutes long and I just was on cloud nine. What was I doing? A great, great American actor George C. Scott had a great quote once, he said, "Every actor worth their salt has one good show a week and spends those other seven shows wondering what they did that made them so good that night." And nobody knows. If you could figure that out and if you could bottle that then, of course, everybody could do it.
Actor and Director
I've been so fortunate to work with such great actors over the years. Laura Linney, Joe Mantello and the entire company of The Normal Heart, Nathan Lane, who I consider one of my great educators. He was a real mentor to me. He was such a professional and he was so devoted to the character and worked tirelessly to make the character in the show as good as it could possibly be. Nathan never ever did it sitting down. He's always full steam ahead and there was a great lesson in that for me to watch somebody's work ethic. It taught me my work ethic.
