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.

I have to admit I've rarely been happier in my life. I have been absolutely thrilled to be back in New York and living a block from where I grew up. Just to be back in New York and, quite honestly, away from Hollywood has been an absolute thrill for me. I feel like I'm a real actor again.

I remember the day Richard Nixon won in 1968. That was a time that seemed certain to bring about long awaited seismic change in America. But events of tragic proportion took us on a turn. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were suddenly dead.

Most actors, unless they're big movie stars and can carve out huge chunks of time to focus on one movie that takes six months - the rest of us have to jump around to make ends meet.

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 didn't expect NBC would be at all thrilled about me, because the year before the West Wing I had rejected a pilot at the last minute and got them very upset. I ended up not coming to the casting - in fact it happened four different times because I just wasn't convinced that I wanted to do television.

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.