The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more. It's always best not to be thinking a hell of a lot while you're acting, because you want it to be as spontaneous as possible, not too intellectual. Just behaving and listening to other people who you're doing scenes with. I always like the latter when it looks easy, even though it may not be.

Karl Malden was quite a mentor. He taught me things he had learned from being in front of a camera so long.

Part of you wants to look over at the people watching and say, "Not bad, huh? Me and Clint Eastwood." But you have to get past that and just be an actor.

You don't really have time to do other than what's written. It's very rigid. Shows have a certain rhythm that nobody wants disturbed. So a lot of that doesn't take place on television, at least the television I was doing at the time when I first started.

Improv is not something I had a lot of experience with, because for a long time, my only experience in front of a camera was all television, which is pretty rigid script-wise, except for the occasional scene where you toss in an ad-lib just to elongate something.

I am also a drummer of sorts. I've got an electronic set sitting in my bedroom.

You make the choice. You look at each scene and you make sure that this is not a person deceiving people.