Sam Seaborn is the best character that's ever been written for me, certainly. By far. And it's a timeless show [The West Wing], one that's having another resurgence now, with people so in an uproar politically.

Did you eat a lot of paint chips when you were a kid?

I have had a lot of blessed, interesting things happen to me and have bumped up against some amazing people.

There are so many family dinners you can do. I eventually had to go to them and say, 'Look, I don't do spatula work. I don't do scenes with oven mitts. If you're looking for that, you've got the wrong guy. I'm not doing scenes about casseroles. It's not happening.

Everybody is naughty, everybody is good.

The fact is, I have a great home and I like to have people come up. I meet enough people just doing my grocery shopping; I don't need to go out and meet any more people.

Some of the '80s movies I did are sort of museum pieces. St. Elmo's Fire is great as a sort of kitschy, "Oh, my god, I can't believe we wore that" type of movie.