Denis O'Hare

“I hate singing. I hate dancing. I enjoyed doing 'Cabaret' and 'Assassins,' but I would wither up and die in 'The Music Man.'”

“Especially when it comes to something like the awards, I find it kind of baffling that 'True Blood' has been snubbed so many times given the incredible range of acting they have on there; I...”

“I was a big fan of 'Six Feet Under.' So, I got a bootleg copy of the first four episodes on videotape, watched them and was instantly into it. During the first episode, I was like, 'Eh.' By...”

“I was a fan of 'Six Feet Under' and was very sad when it ended, so I was not ready to switch my allegiance to another show. So I was like, 'I'm not watching this 'True Blood.' Then a friend...”

“You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate.”

“It's highly dishonorable to ever quit a production. I never have done it, and I can't imagine ever doing it. However, I have been in productions before where, on the first in the read-throug...”

“Generally, it's a great exercise to not get stuck in one medium too long because you begin to lose perspective on the peculiar drawbacks and strengths of the medium. For example, if I'm in t...”

“Probably I have more phobias, fear and eccentricities than I would care to admit. I don't think I'm in danger of losing my mind, but I do often question my own behavior. I have a very bad te...”

“When I did 'Racing Demon' by David Hare, I worked with Paul Giamatti, who had stacks of books in his dressing room. I was offstage a lot, so I would go read in his room. He was reading a fou...”

“I read five books on the Constitution. My favorite was 'Plain, Honest Men' by Richard Beeman. I went on a science jag in the same way. I kept getting in arguments about evolution and being b...”

“For all the import and message of 'The Iliad,' it's ultimately a story that's meant to be heard, and the person hearing 'The Iliad' determines what it means.”

“'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you...”

“I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book.”

“Anybody who knows me has said, 'I had a Denis O'Hare moment.' I suppose in the kindest instance it means standing up for yourself. In the unkindest, it means the crazy guy in the street.”

“I went to Northwestern in Chicago, in Evanston, and then I ended up trickling down in Chicago theater. I did a bunch of plays, but I was non-equity. For a lot of people, non-equity means you...”

“My first paying gig was a play called 'The Voice of the Prairie' at a theater that no longer exists in Chicago called Wisdom Bridge. I played a fast-talking radio huckster - a salesman of cr...”

“Between New York and L.A., and all of us who are actors, I feel like we're just one big, cast repertory company, all running back and forth between the coasts and between different shows. Th...”

“I was raised on the brothers Grimm, but my favorite fairy tales in the world are Oscar Wilde's - 'The Nightingale and the Rose,' 'The Selfish Giant.' The latter is probably my all-time favor...”