I've been very lucky not to have turned down too many roles that I've later regretted.

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 wanna be in action movies, I wanna be the tough guy I wanna scare people.

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.

It was tough doing 'Underneath the Lintel' in New Jersey in the wintertime, but rewarding. Those audiences were lively and interactive. On-stage was great, but off-stage was difficult.

If you go to the real West Wing in the White House it looks like a boring law office; there's really not a whole lot going on in series. The moulding is frayed, the carpet is a little dirty; it's not exciting.

We are often too late with our brilliance. We are on time delay. The only instant gratification comes in the form of potato chips. The rest will find us by surprise somewhere down the road maybe as we sleep and dream of other things.