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.

I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing. I missed her first words. I missed her first steps. I'd leave work before she woke up and got home after she was asleep and didn't really know her. So it was important for that reason to reintroduce myself to the family after all of that hard work.

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.

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.

I love David Fincher - even though it was just two scenes, I loved the way we worked and could tell by the way he was shooting it that this was going to be an affective movie to say the least.

You had actors that came from live theatre and it felt like you're doing a play. Every time we did a three or four minute walk-and-talk in the West Wing, the exhilaration of going on stage would be a part of it.