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.

I fell in love with my wife twenty years ago. I am only now, it seems, getting it through my very thick skull how lucky I am.

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.

My parents grew up in the Depression. Despite the success that they both had in their lives, there's a certain mentality that tells you to finish all the food that's on your plate and not wasting anything and appreciating what's on the table.

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.

I mean everyone, from Al Pacino to Murphy Guyer, are phenomenal actors.