Quotes from Chris Messina

I like romance in films. I like love in films.

When you go to a college for acting, at least the college I went to, it's like everybody just singing and dancing and acting, and they all come together, and everyone's talking about head shots... It just turned me off. I was like, 'What is this? I don't understand this. People are singing in the hallways.'

My mom was a dance teacher, so she put me in dance school when I was a kid. I did everything. I used to take ballet.

I am a big fan of movies from the '70s.

When you do a play, you do it for a couple months, and it just gets in your bones. You can learn about somebody that way.

Probably the best part about being an actor is that you get to be a traveling wanderer.

I think Aaron Sorkin is like Shakespeare. When you go through it, there is a rhythm and clues all over the place of how it should be played.

I would love to close my eyes and see myself with my girlfriend when we're 99 years old and I have a pipe and she's knitting a sweater, and I hope that's the way it goes. I think it's a challenge every day.

I'm not a cook. I don't think I ever will be.

How precise you need to be when you're in a comedy, and the honesty you need and to have those two things meet up and have the execution just right, I always found very difficult.

A lot of acting, as I grew up wanting to do, is kind of like magic... I'm not comparing myself to him in the least bit, but if you knew what Daniel Day-Lewis was doing every step of the way and what he was eating, I don't think when he popped up as Lincoln we would quite believe it.

That is the fun of being an actor. You play all different kinds of people.

I think as an actor, you're constantly putting yourself out there, and a lot of times failing - and failing in front of a bunch of people - and sometimes you have a good moment and something clicks.

One of the interesting parts of being on a television show is you often don't know the fate of your character until you're reading the script. I always look forward to finding out.

Honestly, one of my favorite things about a director is when they understand what an actor brings to their role.

Look at what your idea of success would be. The more that you take in external motivators, the more it reduces your ultimate satisfaction because it doesn't come from inside.

I like funny things, but I don't find myself particularly funny.

When you do a movie, you shoot, and then you go away. A lot of the times you walk about from the movie, you say, 'Oh, I get that scene now... Oh, that whole ending - I wish I could have done another shot.'

I don't know if women gravitate toward me, or I gravitate toward them.

I honestly think comedy is probably the hardest stuff to do.

I did a lot of small black-box theater in New York when I was starting out. I'd get a group of actors together to do workshops and readings. And I ended up directing three or four productions.

Doing something like 'Damages,' I played a character with post-traumatic stress. I was playing with sleep deprivation. I was not sleeping; I stayed up for three days at a time, drinking Red Bull. I would get shaky and tired and hyper.

I'm from another time period. E-mailing sometimes, for me, is difficult.

You don't get to rehearse much on TV. You are kind of rehearsing on film. Depending on the way you work, that's either a good thing or a bad thing.