Jeffrey Tambor

There's a wonderful adage in acting that you're stuck with the character, but the character is also stuck with you.

I kind of like not knowing how to do something - it's more exciting.

I think I have femininity, I have masculinity, but I get to use all of Jeffrey, and that's very powerful. And this is what I always thought when I went down in my little basement in San Francisco, where I grew up, and daydreamed about being an actor: It felt like this. This is what it felt like.

When I was a young boy in San Francisco, I remember being sent home from playing with a friend, and I remember the mother saying, 'Tell Jeffrey to go home.' And I said to the girl, 'Why?' She goes, 'My mother says that you're the people who killed Christ.'

I think most of my heroes are not the traditional types. A guy I was fascinated with was Buster Keaton. I just love what he did. I love that mug.

We all know about secrets - to have that pressure of something you can't reveal. That's universal: 'Am I safe? Am I gonna be OK? Will my family still love and respect me?'

I don't take off my nail polish when I go home because I'm too lazy, and they're fine with it. Maybe the checkout at the grocery store's not so great with it, but they're fine with it. The distrust, the phobias, those are learned, those are taught. But the natural grace is to understand and to love.

My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act. I like having to audition. It's nice to do rehearsals. But it's with an audience that you get to love it!

Love New York Presbyterian. I will do anything for them.

In Yiddish, we say, 'Nisht ahin un nisht aher.' It's neither here, it's neither there. I get more nerves than on anything I do when I'm doing multi-camera. But single-camera, I love very much.

You know that thing where you're trying to do the crossword puzzle, and you're trying to fit the word that's in your head in the puzzle, and then you go 'Ugh!' and you walk away, and then it comes to you. I'm interested in that moment. The release of expectation, and the release of pleasing yourself and pleasing anybody. Breaking the mindset.

I'm really aging myself, but I grew up with 'Playhouse 90' and the plays on the air - 90 minute plays.