I would take William H. Macy as a teacher any day of the week. He's incredible. He's got a lot of hard-earned experience.
Having grown up in the theater family, having done a huge amount of acting from a very little boy to precocious teenager in Shakespeare festivals that my father produced, I went off to college and fell in with the theater gang. I was already an experienced actor. I became a kind of campus star. I heard all this applause and laughter.
I've grown up on set, so I understand a lot of things that a new actor wouldn't, whether it's etiquette or how things work on a technical level.
You know, I really enjoy longevity. I see actors in their forties and they just turn out these really fabulous roles and characters. You know who they are, but you wouldn't necessarily know their names.
I'm certainly a young actor. I'm certainly those two things. Actually, I'm not even young anymore; I'm 29. So, I'm an actor.
To play an older woman, 'til the look is not affected, it is never a problem for me. To play a matured character, it's different. You get to learn so much. It becomes more serious.
I'm in a place in my life where I get offered parts that I didn't get offered before - fathers and uncles and grandfathers and so on. And it took me a long time to get to that place, but I'm glad because it opens up new territory.
Obviously, you look for something that is commensurate with your age. You know that you can't be playing the young hero anymore, and you have to be relegated to something smaller and something elderly, and you just try and do your best.
I'm an old school actor in the sense. More and more now, I play myself as I get older. Even as a writer, I never got typecast. I've always bounced from project to project or initiated my own things.
It's a treat and daunting to be directing someone like Judi Dench, who's made more films than I'll ever make in my lifetime.
