Eric McCormack Quotes

I always get a little uppity when I hear the phrase 'TV actor.' It's like saying you're a magazine reporter. I was in the theater for ten years before I ever had a TV audition.

I'm never one to compare shows to shows.

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 was working with David Warner and John Rhys-Davies, who is from the Indiana Jones movies.He's a very strong, strong presence, and so I had to assert myself.

[Trust Me] was TNT, and they were really supportive of the show, but in the end they just didn't feel it was their audience. I never really understood why we didn't get a longer run at it, because it was Griffin Dunne and Monica Potter. Just a really strong cast.

Mental illness is the last frontier. The gay thing is part of everyday life now on a show like 'Modern Family,' but mental illness is still full of stigma. Maybe it is time for that to change.

I think they [TV productions] were just kind of drying up. I'd done a couple of episodes, but nothing was happening. So I went to Vancouver to visit a buddy and see what was going on, and that year was crazy. Vancouver was on fire at that point. It was all these Stephen J. Cannell productions - The Commish being one of them - and in one I was a bartender, and I think I had five lines.

My wife is a real camper; it's a nice way to bond.

I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider, but I discovered theatre very early on, which got me through.

They're such different things [Townies and Lonesome Dove]. I certainly love them both. Certainly Lonesome Dove would be way hard now, because, I mean, back then I wasn't married.

I had run into Kari Lizer at an airport, I think, and she said, "Would you come on the show [ The New Adventures Of Old Christine]?" And I said, "God. Absolutely."

They [the Travelers] know everything about the year that they're coming into. But you can know everything and still be tripped up by the little stuff that you didn't notice. And one character's Facebook page is made up of lies. It's an interesting comment on what's been going on the last few months. We cannot rely anymore on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. People are making up their own truths.

There was not an episode [on Perception] that didn't deal with some form of mental illness, either my own, or I would be the first to notice if a defendant did a certain thing that perhaps he was suffering from this. And so we got to do some really outspoken stuff for what was otherwise a crime-solving show. And it was just a really good team.

I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.

I like playing a character every day. I like having something to go back to. I always enjoyed that with 'Will & Grace.' I like the camaraderie. I like having a crew that I know and I can work with every day.

Often, particularly with voices, you're hearing horrible things, demon voices, and voices telling them that they're not worth it or that they're going to kill somebody. In those moments, they're overcoming things.

I'd never been to Africa. This really was my first film [The Lost World]. I'd done 10 years of stage. I'd done a little bit of television. But this was my first film.

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

You make a lot of mistakes. I haven't seen that movie [The Lost World] in 20 years. But if I saw it, I'm sure I could pick out a whole lot of mistakes.

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 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.

I got Michael Caine's book, Acting In Film, and I read it on the plane, desperately trying to glean information from him about how to adapt my craft, which was actually very helpful.