I loved growing up in Ohio.

Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.

We moved around a lot when I was growing up. I was always the new kid in class, but I was good at making friends. With an upbringing like that, I was either going to become an actor or a politician. Thank God I became an actor! I'm not cut out for politics.

The first long chapter of my career was almost entirely theater so that, by the time I was 30, 35, I sort of knew who I was as an actor, and I was gradually learning who I was as a human being.

I was doing a college show for the first time, and there was this 20-year-old gay male who's been diabetic his entire life. He said, 'I really wanna get into stand-up.' I was like, 'Oh, my God, do you realize how interesting and inherently funny you are? Go do all the comedy that you wanna do.' I care about that.

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.

I think some people's comedy IQ's aren't as high as other people's, so they don't really know what's going on. Or they think they know what's going on, but they don't really.

Comedy is one of the toughest genres. It is so essential to get the timing right, failing which the humour can fall flat.