Surviving the grind of 18-hour days and getting up at four in the morning to work out for an hour so I'd have the energy to do it again the next day. I did not know I had that discipline. I did not know I had the discipline to learn a seven-page scene in three hours to shoot that day or the next day. I didn't know that I was capable of realizing that potential.
Richard SchiffIt seems not to matter that we are at the brink of a war that may spread beyond Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran and Georgia and then where? To Syria? To North Korea? To China? That we in America are in economic doldrums and are seeing small businesses fold and houses reclaimed by banks and a smouldering panic that is palpable everywhere.
Richard SchiffI 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.
Richard SchiffI was doing a play out in L.A. 20-some-odd years ago called 'Goose and Tomtom' by David Rabe, and somebody saw it and the next thing I know I'm doing the table read of the film version of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon - one of the great films of our generation.
Richard SchiffPlaying 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.
Richard Schiff