I love playing anyone that does stuff that I don't do. The fun of playing an assassin is that I've never killed anybody. The fun of playing a brilliant musician is that I don't actually play any instruments.

I had played many gay characters before, but they were finite - guest characters in TV shows or characters in plays.

It was a film [The Lost World], and it's a sequel at the same time. The first shot on the first day was from the sequel to the movie they hadn't made yet. But yeah, it was a pretty amazing experience running around the jungle for that.

I really liked it [The Andromeda Strain], and I don't know that it ever had the effect they were hoping for. I don't know if they got the audience we were hoping for. But I thought it was very fun, and I loved the character [Jack Nash] I was playing.

Back when I was in theater school, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, 'Sweeney Todd' was a huge touchstone for me, my favorite musical for sure.

When we started the show [Lonesome Dove], Suzanne De Passe - who had done the original miniseries and still owned the property and was turning it into this series - she brought in a lot of old friends - Diahann Carroll and Billy Dee Williams and Dennis Weaver. And we had an interesting collection off the top of these old seasoned actors. Billy Dee was lovely and iconic.

I'd done a pilot [of Townies] with Caroline Rhea [Pride & Joy] that didn't go anywhere.