Quotes About Transition

What you do as a policeman might be the right thing to do, but it's not entertaining. I left that behind me.

I had what you could call a chaotic childhood. My parents divorced when I was 2; I went back and forth between my mom's and dad's houses for years. But, you know, my parents tried to do the right thing. As crazy as everything was, and as much fighting and everything, there was always a feeling of support from them.

We'd been on Geffen for a long time, and I think we felt that we needed a change. I just don't think we felt very close to the people at the label after all this time or that they understood what we were trying to do. I don't have any regrets, because at the time we signed with Geffen, it was the right thing to do.

'The Simpsons' was about children and married parents; 'Futurama' is about people in between; they're growing up and haven't settled down. Every other cartoon show seemed to be, you know, dumb dad, bratty kids.

It was pretty radical to go from the Eagles to being the only melodic instrument. You have to play a certain way. It's like the Who. It was a great kick in the pants for me to get my chops up and to improvise a little more.

I did a lot of commercial and theater work when I got out of school and was living in Dallas, and I moved to Chicago to go through the Second City Conservatory Program.

I don't think about going back to the theater.

I left the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin in 2004, and I did five years of theater after that.

There were centuries when civilization had no theater.

When I got out of undergrad, I had a degree in theater and telecommunications. My first job, I was a news reporter for the local stories for NPR. Then I was a country-western DJ. I did data entry for a yearbook company. In my mid-20s I went back to grad school at NYU, and I specialized in playwriting.

I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.

Moving out to L.A. for me was a leap of faith. I was very secure in my dinner theater world; I loved it, and I was just like, 'I think there's something else out there for me and I just have to go for it.'

I wanted to be a doctor when I was a kid, but I started doing theater in high school because it was a requirement. At first, I was completely irritated. But I ended up loving it.

I announced at the dinner table when I was 11 that I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But my goal changed to musical theater after the choreographer Robert Joffrey saw me perform while I was on scholarship at the San Francisco Ballet School.

That period, doing 'Angels in America' in '94 and then filming with 'Basquiat' in '95, those were gateway years for me as an artist. Two gateways, one into the film industry and one into the world of theater, each formative to me in different, equally essential ways.

When I entered college, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. My advisor happened to be from the theater department, and he encouraged me to take some classes there, which I did.

I had given up the theater and everything propelled me into entertainment. And I didn't resist it.

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world.

When you end a successful sitcom, the most sensible thing to do is go back to the theater.

I was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else.

In the theater, you go from point A to point Z, building your performance as the evening progresses. You have to relinquish that control on a film.

After high school I moved out and worked at pizza shops and movie theaters and moved to L.A. for a year and lived with my brother.

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.

I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.