Project Opportunity Quotes

'Sparkle' fell into my lap. I had heard a little bit about it, that it was being redone in early 2011. I was just kind of like, 'Oh, that would be really cool,' and not really thinking too much about it, and then it came through my agency. I read it, I fell in love with the script and I went in to audition.

I do take lots of time off between projects, but when the right thing comes along, I don't like to turn it down, I've been doing this for a decade, and I remember what it was like when I started. You spend maybe five percent of your time actually doing it, and the rest of the time, you're trying to get that five percent.

I was extremely lucky to get this project [Brief Interviews with Hideous Men]. It was one of those things that I worked on in college. A friend of mine asked me to do a stage reading of that book and I was just completely blown away because, at that point, I was like, 'Acting's having fun with your friends and making people laugh.'

I had also wanted to work with Aaron McGruder for a long time and there were a few other people on the project that I really wanted to work with,so it seems like a miracle of a project ['Black Jesus'] was handed to me.

I see each project as an opportunity to grow as a person and as an actor.

When I get to work with people I admire, it's such a bonus, so it was an easy sell when I got this phone call asking, 'Will you do this thing with David Strathairn?'" Also, they didn't ask me to audition, which is another bonus. But they said, "All your scenes will be with David," and I said, "I'm there!"

I'm a Brit and I just put myself on tape, back in London, for a very distant American project that I thought I didn't stand a chance of getting. And then, I got a call about a week after I had submitted my tape, just saying, "They really like you and want to screen test you." So, I flew to L.A. and did the screen test. And then, I met Elijah [Wood] and did a screen test with him. And then, I had a very nerve-wracking few days back home, waiting and waiting and thinking, "This cannot possibly go my way because that would just be too good to be true." And then, it did.

Brad Wright, who created Grant MacLaren, had me in mind. We'd actually worked together 20 years ago. He wrote an episode of The Outer Limits that I was in in '96 or '95? So we'd been aware of each other for years. I'd lived in Vancouver off and on, where he's based. And it just came to me, and I'm always looking for something different. Perception was a different show than Will & Grace.