I think being a guest star on an ongoing TV show can be a nightmare, and I've done it a lot. You're walking into this family who's very comfortable where they are, and you have to jump on the train and be artificially comfortable. That's a very hard thing to do.
In TV, when you're doing guest roles, you're gliding into a zone where people are already very comfortable. They go in and go to work every day. You're coming in, and it's a brand-new environment, so you have to get it... and then you're gone again.
I'm like this mercenary actor going from show to show - people love to hire me, but then don't want me around much.
I can't tell you too much about it because I'm not even meant to tell you that I'm in it. In fact, I might never work again now that I've been talking to you. I'm not in it for very long, let's put it that way.
I didn't make any mark on Barcelona. It was a blip in my career in terms of what I did as a coach.
I love magazines because they're so dispensable, and they're so quickly consumed. In that way, they're quite honest. They're unashamed about how small an amount of time they're trying to keep our attention.
I was on Days Of Our Lives for about three months.
I initially went into 'Coronation Street' for three months. If they had said back then, 'Do you want to do it for six years?' I probably would have said, 'I don't think so.'
At one time, whenever the hell it was, they wanted a character to come in and stir up the pot. They brought me in for 8-10 episodes and said we'll try it for that.
Actually, guest star roles are really hard. Since you have to walk into a show where the cast has been working together for a long period of time, it can be a real challenge. And you have to feel your way around that while still making an impact on the overall effect of the show.
In the guest star situation on a show, it has a feel of a foreign exchange student - you're worrying the night before where you're going to sit for lunch. 'The Big Bang Theory' was like that. I was supposed to only do one episode. What was different was the cast and production staff was so welcoming, even though I was only scheduled for a week.
It's different as a guest as opposed to being a star of a series. A guest star is a whole different responsibility. It's much different than being a regular. You come in, and it's a lot of unfamiliar faces, and you want to try to fit in as best you can, but also you want to stay there without making waves.
I don't want to do a cameo just for the heck of it.
You do a straight play for three months, four months, maybe. It's so brief. And then you're on to the next thing. I loved that. I love that rhythm and that pace.
My kids download 10 games. They play them all for two minutes. They throw away the eight they don't like. Then they play those last two obsessively for a month. That's alien to those of us who buy a $60 game and play it for 40 or 50 hours. The discovery mechanism is completely social, and I don't think you get that genie back in the bottle.
When you have a guest role, it's like being dropped into a show out of a helicopter.
