When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out.

I had no idea that, when you audition for television or movies, you go to a big building - like, an office building - and you walk in the room, and everybody, I assumed, was smarter than me and better than me, and there's actors you recognize. I once fainted at an audition.

Show business is a great place to fail upward... and I guess that's what I've done.

Probably my favorite job that I've ever had and probably will have - although I'm reserving judgment on 'Manhattan Love Story,' Tuesday nights at 8:30 on ABC, because it's pretty fun so far - is 'Psych,' which I did for four or five years.

Without being good enough, I started figuring out how to make my way through the minefield of a script, which is what it was to me at the time, and the rest is semi-history.

I was selling real estate at the time, in Pacific Palisades, California, so imagine that: getting a note and a bottle of champagne from Jack Nicholson when I'd barely made a dime as an actor. It really kept me going.

It's never good to just imitate somebody. That never works, because then you're not filling it with anything.