Tell me how you got started.
In sixth grade I did a play and it was the first time I'd ever been good at something. I was never good at sports or any of that, but with acting I found something I could do. So I started taking drama classes at school and around the same time started classes at the Seattle Children's Theatre, which is where I grew up. Great theater town. And I did plays all through high school and when I was about 16 I decided this is what I wanted to do.

When I got out of high school, I applied to just two schools: University of Southern California, and Bellevue Community College. And the day I was supposed to send in the application, in a flare of 18 year old drama, I actually burnt the community college application. I said, "If I don't get into USC, then I guess I'm not going to college. Because this is what I want to do!" And that's where I went.

Fight on. How was college?
This is how I saw college: I had a great college career, like an athlete would have a great college career. But it took me about a year to un-learn a lot of the stuff I had learned at school to get a job on TV. The television camera, the film camera was never spoken of that I can remember. It was just never talked about, and we went to school in Southern California. And why was that? It was too much of like, "We are here to do theater!"

I mean, it was great and I did a lot of great plays and had a wonderful time, but I was way too big, too theatrical for camera. I mean, this is how you audition [indicating the interview camera], just sitting here talking. But I was huge when giving an audition.

How did you manage to tone down your style?
I got in a class for a few years and that helped immensely. I also got on-the-job training: One of my first big jobs was a show called SeaQuest, and Roy Scheider... I'm in this tiny little capsule with him and it's like my second day and he says to me, "Um, hey... you don't have to project. Just talk to me."

And I look down and see this little microphone taped to my chest and I'm like, "Oooooh, right !" And there was an English actress named Stephanie Beacham on the show and she taught me how to do "off camera". I had no idea. I was just lucky enough that I could use this first big acting job as a learning experience and they were all cool with that. You don't often get that opportunity.

Do you feel your education prepared you for the world of professional acting?
My education prepared me to speak really really well when necessary. Lot of voice training. It's interesting because I graduated college in 1991 and the job I'm doing now is the first time I've ever gotten to use diction on television. Because most of this stuff is just basic TV... there's not a lot of call for the "j-u glide", and the "aspirated t".

No, as much as I bitch about my education, I'm absolutely grateful that I did have that training. I learned how to do the classics, I learned the world of theater and got to work on a big stage. I've always been really adamant that if you're going to be an actor you have to have training. So many people come out here and just think it's a matter of having a "look" or whatever and just getting discovered. And there's a lot of people who do get lucky, but they don't have the staying power, I think. There are so many examples of people who get 1 or 2 lucky breaks based on their looks but... it's training and talent that sustain a career.

So having always been in it for the long haul, and having no other skills, and never wanting to do anything else... I feel really fortunate that I have the education that I do. Even though it's taken 10 years to sort of realize it.

Tell me about the transition from college to professional work.
It was really really difficult because like I said I would go into casting director's offices and sit in front of a video camera and read the sides [2-3 page excerpt from the script]... and you're not reading with actors. It's just whoever they've got to read that day. And you have to come up with something. And I was doing this big stage technique, and I lost jobs because of it. I've been told, "We wanted you for this but you were just too big." The thing is, 9 times out of 10 they're not not going to say "bring it down, make it tighter" or whatever. They're just going to say "send in the next guy". And so I really had to retrain myself. In all fairness, I don't know if that's the college's fault, or the training I had, or just the kind of actor I was. I was always much more of an "outside-in" kind of actor.

In the last five years I've really been trying to reverse that. I've been lucky enough to be working for 10 years, but I'm constantly trying to figure that out, trying to hone things... to work in class. I had a conversation the other day with my acting coach about this job I'm doing and I said the biggest thing I wanted to do is make everything matter more. Which, it's all within me, I just have to be able to tap it. It's something nobody can help me with, I just have to be willing to go there, to go to those places. Whereas before I felt I didn't need to because I had the costume, or I had the facial hair, whatever... those things. And it was enough. But it was false. I'm just trying to personalize my work more

How is it working for you? Can you tell a difference in your performances?
I definitely can tell. I know when it's real, or... I mean, as real as it's going to get. I know when I have false moments. I've been working on [Judging Amy] with Tyne Daly, and she's one of the greatest actresses of her generation, and everything's real with her. And I can tell when I'm faking it... and the people watching probably know when I'm faking it. My personal bullshit meter is a lot more sensitive now.

This job I'm doing now [HBO's Deadwood], it's interesting because it's a period piece, it's 1876, a cowboy thing. And it's all the stuff I do really well... it's mannerisms, a certain style...all the stuff I can do fallling of a log. So the challenge for myself was to make it real. I used to think, "It's a style... just do the style." But now I think, "You don't get to do this style unless you have the reality to back it up."

It's like doing Shakespeare: You can't do it well if it's built on a house of cards. I used to think that finding the style of the piece was everything. But I've come to realize that the style is the last thing you put on. Your performance has to be real before you worry about the style. I'm hit and miss right now because it's not a muscle I'm used to using but it's certainly better than it was.

How did you get your first agent?
I got out of school, I did a showcase, I got lucky and got a business card from a manager. I called him the next day and said, "Okay... you're my manager." Luckily he was reputable and had contacts, he got me interviews with agents. William Morris was one of them and APA and a couple other big ones, but everyone was passing on me.

What was the interview process like?
It was different than it would be for me now. I was going in as a 20 year-old kid with no professional credits whatsoever, no union card... and going to huge agencies like that they're basically going to wonder, "Are we going to make money off this kid quick? Does he have enough of the it factor"... or whatever that crap is... they're thinking, "Where we can get this kid a job that's going to pay us money?"

Basically, you go into this big board room and you sit and you talk. It's still a process I don't understand, it's still a process I'm not comfortable with. You go in and and they see if there's any spark there, see if there's anything they respond to... I don't know, I might as well be on Mars, I just don't understand it. Nowadays my resume will say a little something, and I've got tape, so that says that I've worked... I'm capable of working and and capable of being hired.

That first time everyone was passing on me, but APA said they'd "side pocket" me, meaning they'd take me on and see what happens. They weren't going to sign me, unless of course I got a job, but there was no risk to them. So they got me an audition for [Beverly Hills] 90210 for a recurring character. It was my very first professional audition, and I went all the way to Aaron Spelling.

It was between me and one other guy, the role was a young college professor, so I... coming from a theater background... I went in with the tweed jacket, you know... the elbow patches and everything, the glasses, brief case. And the guy who got the part was this really handsome guy with the big square jaw and he was there in jeans and a tee shirt, and you know... he got the part.

But in the course of me leaving the final audition to driving home, the agents that had been passing on me had been checking up on me and I guess I got a good enough report because they all called my manager back and said, "Forget what we said... we love him we want to sign him!"

So I had a meeting at William Morris, and they signed me. I was with William Morris and I framed my resume because I was with William Morris... and I never got a job. I auditioned for a year and didn't get anything.

How many auditions do you think you did that first year?
50? Somewhere around there. Lots and lots of auditions of being too big, and not knowing what I was doing, but I finally got a job. I went in and I got three lines on Seinfeld and they Taft-Hartley'd me, which means they gave me my union card, and... the agency dropped me.

And I was like, "What bizarre world do we live in?! I just got a job!" But in the course of that year the agent who loved me left William Morris, and the guys who took over wanted nothing to do with me. So I started my first job without an agent. Somebody else picked me up real quick because I was suddenly working, but I was with a small little agency for a couple years and slowly got enough work to build up my resume and build up my reel and was able to kind of jump up to the better ones.

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