I've always loved film, and since I knew I probably couldn't be a cowboy or a spy in real life, I thought I'd play one in a movie! I started doing theater in middle school and tested for 'Victorious' before being in an episode of 'iCarly.'
I started in theater; I did theater in New York for 14 years before I even thought about doing movies - I never thought about being in a film; it just never occurred to me.
I always loved the idea of a spy movie and part of it came from my personal love of spy movies. It started when I was growing up as a little kid in the 60s.
When I was younger, I definitely thought musical theater was sort of more pure than film. I used to say I'd never go to film because we had to get it right the first time in musical theater. But then, of course, I started doing film and realized I loved it. Keep in mind that I was 8 years old when I said that.
They gave me the chaps and hat and everything. I looked like a real cowboy. I walked around the rodeo and thought, I am a real cowboy and thought everyone thought I was a real cowboy.
You know who first started calling me 'The Cowboy' - Paul Richards. He loved to play golf and when he came to Los Angeles he used to call me up and I'd arrange for him to play at Lakeside and when he saw me, he always called me 'Cowboy' and everybody else in baseball picked it up.
I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.
I started in theater. I did theater professionally for seven years with my company before I started doing 'Friends.' I was waiting tables and doing theater.
I would make a huge distinction between theater improvisation and film improvisation. There isn't much improvisation in film - there's virtually none. The people that theoretically could be good at this in a theater situation don't necessarily do this in a film in a way that will work, because it's much broader on a stage. But in a movie, it has to be real, and the characters have to look entirely real because it's being done as a faux documentary, so there are even fewer actors that can do that on film.
I wasn't that great in sports. I started doing children's theater and loved it. I thought I had a great thing going with musicals. I thought, 'I can do this. It's fun.' I wanted to go for it, and I thought I'd like to make a living doing this.
I started doing documentaries in the first place because of the war. I always wanted to do feature films, and I studied directing when the war started, so I was working with actors before, in film and in theater. So I think it's easy to work with actors when you have a script that is clear, when they know what and why they are doing it.
Even before I started going to movies, I loved the idea of them. When I started learning to read as a kid, I started reading the movie pages in the paper and I could tell you what was showing at every theater within a ten mile radius of our house.
When I started working in film, I loved photography, I loved the image, I loved telling the story within a frame, but as I started playing around with film and video, it was like, 'Oh my god.' You just have so much more to play with.
I was in high school, and I was the guy that always got cast in the school play. Theater is huge in high school in Minnesota, and I knew that I was very good at that, and gifted, and I was 'the guy,' but it still wasn't something I ever thought of as 'a job' or something that one could do professionally.
I've always loved punk music, since I was in my early teens, since middle school.
I loved musicals. I loved being in the school play and being lucky enough to get parts in the school play. But they always took place in some other time and place.
I've always enjoyed performing. I was in figure skating before, and then I joined my first school play. Ever since that, you have not been able to get me out of the theater.