On a selfish basis, I really enjoy sports and activity.

I've always felt that improv looks and feels more clever when you're there to experience it live than when you have the degree of separation that television creates. Television raises expectations.

I worked for [Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame inductee] Tommy Hunter. It was a wonderful training program at the CBC, because they made sure they never paid you very much, so you had to do a lot of things, and that way you made some money. [A phone rings.] That's my agent right now telling me I've got a 13 cent residual from Tommy Hunter in 1969.

If a director can find the exact combination between the written word as a guideline and improvisational input from his actors, I think that's where you'll find the most successful work being done.

We look for opportunities to play together including basketball, tennis, swimming, riding bikes and touch football. I try to provide a loving environment where we can play. I think that's good on so many levels - emotionally, for family interactions and, of course, physically.

I've never been a big fan of improvisation, because I think you appreciate the process and the cleverness of it more than the actual comedy in most cases.

So we had psychiatrists and counselors and therapists around the set regularly, especially for those scenes in which Jason would be dealing with a patient to make sure we were doing it all appropriately.