My only job as an actor is to try and understand the character and, to the best of my ability, bring this character to life.

I suppose when I was a kid, and I went to movies, and later went to some plays on my own when I got a little older, in New Orleans, where I was living then, I zeroed in on the actor.

But I would like to think that it's the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor.

I was very conscious of the actor; watched what he did.

But I'm an actor and I like to just keep working.

I'm into being a dad, that's where my focus is most of the time. I'm an actor that's my job, but it's not my life. I have a lot of other interests too.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

I had to learn how to become a real actor, I had to suffer and be rejected and face that 100 times just like every actor. It wasn't like someone handed it to me.

The one time I was an actor, it happened to be in a globally dominant juggernaut. That was lucky.

Obama is a very good actor. He knows how to play it. And he is very adept at creating this 'Obama' - this character who is there whenever the world needs something.

I was a guy who needed to go to class, because I had some raw talent that I thought was identifiable, when I finally made a decision to be an actor. And yet I wanted to learn how to really do the stuff. You know, 'How do I get to be a serious actor?'