I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me.

Most of my career I've spent really nervous. Just about work, getting work and having it in.

One of the big draws of the show is here's a guy who is ordinary in a lot of ways but, due to his profession, he's placed in extraordinary situations that he has to make right with action and with thought. That's what is appealing about Jack - he takes charge.

Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at.

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I dont have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.