I find that once you find the sound and voice of this character you're playing, everything else follows. It comes right out of the fingertips eventually - the physicality, the gestures, the walk - for me.

I've always had facility with the German accent.

I'll be with The Goat until the fall. Then I've been given three plays to look at and there have been a couple of films have come over the desk. I will probably not do either one of them.

In some roles you do that very hard work where, at some point into rehearsals, where all of a sudden it snaps into place. You feel like the soul of this character is now dwelling in you.

Society historically has a difficult time with the concept of something new and foreign that shakes up our comfortable views, especially if it involves the very volatile question of sexual identity.

Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it.

The first theatre I ever found was in the backyard of a new suburban community in the foothills of the Poconos. My dad was a young FBI agent at his first or second posting - we're all from New York. He was posted in Scranton, Pennsylvania and he put the family in a brand new red-brick apartment. It was in a C-shape and behind it was a small hill that led up to the woods. There was a white-washed brick wall that was a perfect theatre! There were windows and all the ladies behind the windows in their apartments. I would go out there after lunch every day and sing opera.