Characters can become boring. That's what's tricky about television. It goes on and on - you're playing this same character for five seasons and it gets easy to fall into just walking on the set and assuming you know how to play a scene.
It's a luxurious complaint to have as an actor, but playing the same character for many years can become routine.
For 15 years, I've been playing the same character - which is myself - and I'm bored with 'myself'.
These days with the web, you can burn out a character really quick.
I don't think I could last in anything for 10 years doing a character.
I've certainly said I don't want to do any more bad guys, then I sit and don't do anything for a while and then think, "Okay, one more."
When you play a character for so long, it's easy to get disengaged, and it becomes mundane and routine.
So much as I enjoy big novels of epic sweep, I often find, say, if they follow several generations, by the third generation, I'm not caring about the people anymore.
The biggest risk with a series that goes on this long is that you'll get bored with the character.
I'd never thought much about a series, because I liked the idea of picking a script I liked with a character I thought I could sustain for an hour. In a series, you live with one character day in and day out - and you only hope it will be one that will not drive you crazy.
I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, 'I never want to see you again.'
If you get on a TV show that's successful, odds are that you're playing the same character for as many years as the show is running, which can be its own blessing, but it can also be a curse because you're playing the same thing and that can be tiresome.
