Quotes

Most people know me from 'The Office,' where I played a guy who grunted out three or four words an episode and was kind of a knucklehead, and so I think it's surprising for people to see me do something like this. But Shakespeare is what I grew up wanting to do.

Everyone remembers the last thing you did.

It meant so much to me as a kid to see professional theater and hear Shakespeare's words.

There's a lot of people in the community who are seeing a play for a first time, and that, to me, is really exciting.

There's a lot of pressure being an actor and taking on challenges that people don't expect of you.

I do theater as much as possible, but it's very difficult to manage for me.

There are all kinds of historians and scholars who say that Brutus could have been a son of Caesar. That's definitely a possibility. He's a generation younger than Caesar.

For me, if I'm going to do a play, I prefer to do something with language that I don't get to speak on TV.

I do things on TV that are kitchen-sink realism, which is great, but I like the challenge of a completely new language and dramatic environment.

There was a time when people liked to take Shakespeare and twist him around to make whatever social or political statement they wanted to make.

I just spent three years on 'The Office.' I made enough money that I can take five weeks out and do a play.

I've known numerous actors who got a pilot that they thought was going to run forever, and they went out and blew all of the money. Now they've got a mortgage they can't pay for.

I went to Fountain Valley High School. I remember watching Grove Shakespeare productions here. It left a big impression on me.

Petruchio is a very clever guy and clearly has a lot of bravado and confidence. My feeling is that he's broke at the beginning of the play and needs a dowry to save face back home.

So often, I think, in these relationship comedies, they don't necessarily reflect the people that I know. They don't reflect myself.

I've done, like, eight pilots, and every time, everyone thinks it's going to go for 10 years.

You always have that danger when you do a pilot of getting this gigantic chunk of change, and all of a sudden you're like, 'It's going to run forever, and I'm buying a house in the Hollywood Hills.'

It is fun to do the one-off guest stars on stuff.

It doesn't behoove you as an actor to sit around and worry.

Usually, you see this play as a guy who can't make up his mind, but our version is more of a revenge thriller than a man who is pontificating what he should do next. I've never seen a 'Hamlet' this big, this exciting, with this many cast members; it's quite a spectacle.

I sat there in awe that some guy overseas, trying to protect our interests, was using a silly comedy as a survival tool. My brain had an explosion. I was really moved by that.

So often in sitcoms, it's like, 'Oh, that husband of mine. He just screwed up again.' They just have to tolerate each other. It's not the most fun to play from my perspective. But by the same token, you can't be like, 'We're just like Romeo and Juliet, always in love.'

'Hamlet' is the most famous play in the world for a reason. The journey you go on is incredible.

At the end of the day, none of us are doing an impression of the guys we are playing; we are just trying to create the essence of what they do for a living and go through with their families.