[Doctor Cukrowicz] was basically a role where you have two diva actresses - Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson - and my role was to say, "And then what happened? Tell me more." But I wanted to do it was because a) it was Tennessee Williams, a great writer, and b) it was Richard Eyre, an amazing director. And to work with those two amazing women!

Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.

['John F. Kennedy] movie is based on a massive best-selling book, which is always helpful. And then the script was amazing and answered my question, "Why this? Why now?" And the "why now" is that it's 50 years since the assassination, and the country needs to have and will have a conversation about that. And the "why this" is the construct, which I think is sort of ingenious.

The only good thing I could say about Dr. Vegas was that it was fun working with Amy Adams. I like to feel I picked somebody great as my leading lady and was borne out. Oh, and I learned how to snap on a medical glove very easily.

[J.F] Kennedy's own accent was inconsistent. So people are inconsistent. And it always kind of irks me when people talk about inconsistent accents, because people are imperfect by nature. So in the end, what you do is, you do an inhabitation and not an imitation.

Sampling, statisticians have told us, is a much more effective way of getting a good census.

So I came to the realization: Nothing in life is unfair. It's just life.