James Van Der Beek

The ego certainly is the biggest obstacle as an artist or performer, so any chance you get to destroy that is really healthy.

I've been through quite a few hurricanes. I worked in North Carolina, where there's a housing development whose name was Landfall.

At a young age, acting was so inspiring and exciting, because to me it was play - make-believe, pretend.

I'm kind of shocked that it's taken Hollywood so long to realize that so many great movie talents can come out of television. One of the reasons they do is that on TV you don't have the luxury of a film's big budget, and people have to compensate with creativity.

I've never really had a problem with the imagination level of an audience. They're always smarter and savvier than any studio exec will give them credit for.

I always show up to work and give it everything, and some things turn out better than others - and some things you can expect that it will come out better than others.

The less seriously you take yourself, the better work you're going to do.

You buy a house and you get it checked out and you feel like you've kind of made your mark here in some way. And then an act of God just comes up the coast and has the potential to just completely wipe it clean. Weather like that is certainly humbling.