Not many get a chance to hit the career re-set button.
That's kind of the fun part about acting. We do get the right to kind of get from A to Z any way we want, as long as we start at A and end at Z.
It's not a sprinter's approach. It's more like a long-distance thing. You can stick around a lot longer if you kind of slow-play it.
I played a ton of team sports growing up, and team wins are just incredibly gratifying.
I don't want to be obnoxious with my ambition or sound like I expect any sort of entitlement here. Hollywood is not in the business of humoring people.
That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don't play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.
I feel incredibly fortunate I walked away, took care of other business, and then came back to show business.
Pre-production and post-production is something that I've never been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised that you could accomplish a lot during pre-production.
I'd much rather have the freedom, and the obligation to use it responsibly, than be put in a box.
My father was a freelance writer/director/producer, and my mother was a stewardess for Pan-Am. It was very non-traditional.
It was like 'Risky Business' for 10 years. My parents were out of town, they left me a bunch of money, the car, and the house, and I didn't know when they were coming home.
Kids want you to take them to whatever kid movie is opening, and you just hope it's good because you're going to buy a ticket, no matter what. If it's no good, you kind of drape your arm over your kid so they don't get smashed, and you take a little nap.
I haven't met a lot of 'Hogan Family' fans.
I was very surprised to get a reading for 'Arrested Development' because it really seemed to be the opposite of that which I was known for doing.
If it's a good part in a good movie, I'll do it.
Things are going better now than ever, but in 24 months? I could be hearing crickets.
In most professions, if you stay at the office an extra four hours every day, you're gonna impress the boss. You're gonna get that promotion; you're gonna get that raise. You're gonna at least have job security. But with acting, if you're really ambitious and you have a good work ethic and are really good at your job, it might not really matter.
If you're stumbling out of a bar, and people tweet about it, well, don't be dumb. If you're going to get falling-down drunk, stay at home - which I did a lot of.
It's not about the script: it's about who the director is and who the other people in the cast are. Because you can look at a great script and execute it in a very sophomoric way, and you can look at an OK script, and you can execute it in a very sophisticated way and come out with something really good.
I think things that are really, really not good are easy to see. But films that are decent can either be made good or great based on the execution. At the end of the day, it's always a crapshoot about the execution, the level of taste, in any department.
A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.
There's a bunch of different flavours of funny. It's all about the execution of it.
I don't have anything to fix! I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't eat carbs. My life is just great now. Normal. Vanilla.
When you're playing a supporting character, you don't really have a lot of control of the quality of the film.
On the whole, a director who make the set a comfortable place to work is really important, whether it's a comedy or drama.
It was a blast. I was doing everything that teenagers do and everything people in their twenties do. I was playing as hard as I was working, which was an effort to really balance my life.
I don't feel sorry for people in the public eye getting eyed by the public.
I'm in a little bit of a different situation, because working in the business that I do and living in the city that I live in, I haven't had a problem with people who are gay. Since I was 10 I've been working alongside them, and some of my best friends are gay.
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.
The kids can't watch 'The Wire,' but there's great educational stuff for them to watch on TV if it is TV time. There are great apps on the iPad that are interactive and educational.
You hit those valleys sometimes and it's really frustrating. It's like getting stuck in traffic on the freeway. But there's not much you can do about it.
You do certain things in your twenties that are just not appropriate in your thirties and certainly not appropriate in your forties. Eventually you even the scales, and it's time to move on and become an adult and start working hard again and going to sleep a little bit earlier. Fortunately, I got a job to facilitate that transition.
Directing films is incredibly exciting to me.
There are worse things than being constantly hired to do anything.
I would rather do three or four small parts every year as opposed to some of the lower-hanging fruit that might get my name above the title.
To have the privileged position of being the guy who is responsible for shaping the entire experience for an audience as opposed to being just one instrument in that orchestra, being an actor, it's all-encompassing.
My mother is British; she's from Shrewsbury. She turned me onto 'Monty Python' very early.
I really empathise with some of my peers who had success in the early years; then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.
Acting has always been very comfortable for me, so it allows me to pay attention to other parts of the process literally while I'm acting.
I have a tendency to evolve into William Shatner, with my big fat face.
You want 100% and 100% to make 200, instead of 50 and 50 making 100.
My father was a director and producer, so when I was a little kid, he would take me to movies and show me what's good and what's not good and why, and often that would take me to a conversation about directing.
Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.
I didn't really watch 'Beavis & Butt-head' that much or 'King of the Hill,' but I was a huge 'Office Space' fan.
People still come up to me and say, 'Hey, 'Teen Wolf!' 'Teen Wolf Too' closed a week after it opened. Where did they see it?
My upbringing as a child was very atypical.
I'm looking forward to playing Michael Bluth many, many more times.
Guys like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Sacha Baron Cohen, they do things you love to watch. I like to do the other half.
I've been fortunate, but I'm also not very precious about making sure I'm the star of a film.
