Quotes from Dylan McDermott

I think everything keeps changing. There was a time when television was a bad thing for actors and it meant that you could only do television, and now we see everyone does television.

Style is innate to who I am. My father gave me a picture the other day. I must have been about seven, and I had on wing-tip shoes and some cool pants. I thought, 'Wow!'

Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare.

L.A. is still such a fascinating place to me, so big and diverse. It's so spread out that you can go from Zuma to downtown and there's really like 10 different towns in between.

My dad was kind of a pool shark and had a Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin thing going on. I've always been fascinated by the fifties because of him. There was a hip, cool, anything-goes atmosphere back then, but looking good was still a priority.

My past is not pleasant; I grew up in a very tough town, Waterbury, Connecticut. I grew up in New York, too, but Waterbury was tougher.

I don't like the slasher stuff, myself, but I do like the psychological horror of Roman Polanski and that world. But, it's curious to me why people do like to be afraid.

Honestly, I'm cool with everyone, and people pick up on that. I'd say, 'I'm not gay, but it's all good.' It's kind of like going to Paris when you don't know the language; some Americans get into trouble over there, but I'm just like, 'Sorry, I don't speak French.'

Everything keeps changing. People want to label things all the time and once you label it, it changes again.

I mean, I always think when you're an actor you have to be the guy running into the burning building rather than running out of it, if you want to make some noise as an actor.

'Dark Blue' is ultimately a gritty crime drama, at its core. I don't think that is ever going to change.

I've always been fascinated by Baretta and Donny Brasco, and other undercover cops in movies.

I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There's an expression that I get to have in acting that I can't consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.

With the rise of cable, network is clearly floundering because the characters on cable are far more fascinating than they are on network. Network television is trying to figure it out. Network television really relies on story rather than character, and cable relies on character.

Media runs the world, and it all changed, I think, when the debate between Kennedy and Nixon happened, and first of all we saw them on television, and that changed everything.

You'd see those movie stars on the screen, and say, 'I want to be that guy.'

The Victorian era is the sexiest age for me, but I also like a woman in a pair of jeans.

New York had a big influence on me growing up, and I was really part of the club scene - the Mudd Club and Studio 54. When you're living in New York, you are just bombarded with style, trying to figure out how to be cool and how to feel relaxed at the same time.

I was terrified of the Vietnam War when I was 13. I thought I was going. The draft was such an ominous thing, I felt as if it was going to trickle down to me.

As much as they deny it, I think people want to be scared. It's a phenomenon, why people want to be scared when there is so much violence and craziness in the world. People still really enjoy being scared. It's a conundrum to me. It's hard to explain. It's an unconscious thing, really, why people like that so much.

People behave badly and people are in prison and people are on death row, and there are no excuses for everybody's behavior, but most people are coming from abuse.

It's like, no matter what I do, I always feel like I'm five years old, and I end up in the back of my father's car looking out the window, and nothing has changed in 25 years.