My first thought about acting, growing up here in New York, was theater, and I feel like I need to force myself to go get my ass kicked in a rehearsal room and do one of those plays at some point.
I started writing plays in around 1967, and at a certain point, I thought, 'I'm writing plays, I should learn about acting and what it is.' So I went to the HB Studio in New York, and I was there for about nine months.
New York, it was an adult portion. It was an adult dose. So it took a couple of trips to get into it. You just go in the first time and you get your ass kicked and you take off. As soon as it heals up, you come back and you try it again. Eventually, you fall right in love with it.
I have to work hard and wear pants. I've worked really hard these last years, and since everything is coming together at the same time, I had to move the play back. I'm kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naïve about the theater, a total innocent. He says to me, have you ever been to a rehearsal room? Do you realize you are opening at the Public in New York? You do understand that the audience will be New York theater people?
Chicago theater vs. New York theater. There's just nothing to say about it really. If you've seen Chicago theater, you know that the work is true to what is there on the page. It's not trying to present itself with some sort of flashy, concept-based thing. It's about the work, and it's about the acting you're about to watch. So acting-based theater feels like it was born there to me.
There are so many things to do in New York. I try to get to the theater and see some plays. I have a bicycle over here, and I ride around New York.
I think I can work anywhere, but you don't get the same kind of inspiration everywhere. New York theater has become a big inspiration for me. I only started writing for the stage myself because I like to see the good, mostly off-Broadway plays in New York.
One thing I really want to do is - I spent ten years in New York doing theater before I moved to L.A. to do TV and film. I'd really like to go to back New York and do some theater.
I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.
With voice acting, it liberates you to play characters you'd never do in a million years because you're physically not right. You can show up looking like hell, you don't have to memorize your lines because you can read them right off the page, and you get to play the most fun parts. You come in and you kick everyone's ass and you get your own ass kicked, and then you go home.
I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near unto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.
I'm kind of an old theater guy, so I'm sort of attuned to it. Like, when I go to New York, I go to plays.
My return to the theater in New York was so specific. I didn't want it to be about leveraging my exposure or my fame, so the first show I did in New York was an ensemble piece at an Off-Broadway theater, and I wanted to make sure that it was just about the play and about the experience.
I love acting. Modeling is fun, too, but I feel like there is more room to stretch yourself and open yourself up to new experiences with acting. That's why I got into acting in the first place.
I went to college and studied theater; I went to a theater conservatory. I live in New York because I wanted to do plays and still do plays.
I thought I was going to be a theater actor. I moved to New York after college and did some plays and worked a lot. Once the realities of living as a theatrical actor hit me, I realized I wanted to start making a little bit of money and not have to bartend and work in theater.
I've always wanted to do theater in Chicago. Chicago is a big theater town-and, in some ways, I think this city is savvier and smarter than New York. Sometimes, I think it's a little too chic to go to theater in New York these days.