Families are like puzzles. They fit together in a certain way, and if one piece is missing, it throws everything off.

I turned down a lot of things - some very lucrative - because I could afford to at that time. That didn't lead to a happy place. I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing.

There's a genetic memory that stays on your bones. What you experience when you're young, I think it stays with you.

I would love to be in the position where the role is challenging enough that I need three months to prepare for it and then six months to live the life of character.

I am one of the lucky ones; believe me, I haven't forgotten that.

Playing a TV character for seven years is almost like when you do a play. You live, breathe, and everything else with that character 24-7 for six months or four months or whatever, and that gets very deep in your blood. When you do a TV character for seven years, that's a long time. It becomes a seminal era in your life.

Every role is challenging in its own way, but the most challenging roles are the ones that are badly written - then it's completely up to you to come up with something that is interesting to the story and myself as an actor.