"I actually have a degree in music and was aware that music was a tool used in therapy. I didn't realize how far it had come since I was in college in the mid-seventies."
"I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them."
"I like to act. Every other aspect of show business I find uninteresting."
"People evolve and it's important to not stop evolving just because you've reached 'adulthood.'"
"I'm not a fan of any genre but am a fan of movies that are intelligent and/or funny. That goes across all genres: a horror movie, a zombie movie, alien invaders, chick flick, or raunchy comedy. If it's well done, I'm a fan."
"I was not a giant comic book fan as a kid, but to the extent that I did read comics, Spider-Man was always my favorite guy."
"The best complement I ever got from the public or producers or directors is that I just totally blend in and become the character and they don't notice me and that the play happens or the movie happens or the TV show happens."
"There's a kind of numbness, a sameness, a lack of motivation in 'good job' culture."
"We're raising a generation of kids who are being overly praised for incredibly minor accomplishments. I think it's counter-productive."
"Most of my friends - when I was five, six, seven years old - their dads were working in an auto plant in Detroit until 5:30, and then they were sat in rush hour. They weren't around as much. My dad finished at three o'clock, so he was just around more."
"I went from being a jock to a hippie. It was a very clear-cut decision. I had to be one or the other. I had to forsake that other aspect of myself. Or thought that I had to, which is regrettable. Quickly, I was back in the pine trees with the hippies, listening to my Jimi Hendrix and my Janis Joplin and turning on, tuning in, and dropping out."
"I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part."
"I was studying music in college. I was singing, I was doing operas and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and then I was offered a job as the music director of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, in Bigfork, Montana."
"When I got out of college, I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came, and the theater doors were the ones opening the most."
"Fortunately, for the first 20 years in my career, I didn't have any other responsibilities outside of myself. I didn't have a wife and kids, so I could afford to sort of barely scrape by, to do theater."
"Being evil is easy."
"I am who I am. I have a low voice, and I look like somebody's dad or boss or a police chief, and those roles come my way."
"I've had a contemptuous relationship with authority throughout my life. I found myself at odds with authority, and I'm disdainful of blind authority."
"I would like to find, or I would like a part to come to me that is like the part that Dennis Franz was fortunate to be able to play on 'NYPD Blue,' a sort of similar-looking actor to me, a generic, bald white guy who you would often think of as playing the authority figure. But he was the disgruntled middle-man. That would be a fun character."
"If the awards buzz is happening, and it's coming from critics and people in the business and all of that, that's only more good news."
"I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective."
"Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him."
"I had many, many mentors that I worked with. Music teachers, choir directors, directors in summer stock or in regional theater. You know, people I was able to work with repeatedly and learn from who were really sort of appropriate people for me to work with at a given time in my development as an actor."
"Seriously, who doesn't want to slap a 27-year-old movie star?"
"On 'Oz' one day, I got a chunk of a camera embedded in my head, and I was passed out on the floor geysering blood while the set medic stood over me, freaking out. No help whatsoever. I ended up going to the ER and getting nine stitches in my head - real Frankenstein stitches."
