Some actors start with the right shoes. I start with the right hats.
It's such a rare and rewarding thing to be in control of space and time for two hours a night, to go through a journey and take the audience along. There's nothing quite like it.
You can really get your chops in shape in the resident theatres, and I urge anyone to investigate them and to be willing to go anywhere to pursue the great roles.
The beauty of performance for me is finding details with which to betray character.
I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world.
When I was younger - I don't do this too much now - but sometimes if I couldn't sleep, I would lie in bed and imagine all the characters I've played at a dinner table together.
My mother was a children's librarian, and I was raised on lots of English children's literature. It gave me this weird idea that I was English.
There was a lot of playing by myself, wearing last year's Halloween costume and wandering around the yard talking to myself - which may account for my fondness for doing different voices.