Eric McCormack
I jump out of the boat [in The Lost World], and I'm trying to swim to the kid, and my boots fill with water, and I start to drown, and the director has no idea why I'm flailing around. He's, "Come on, come on!" And I managed to rescue myself. I'm wet and sitting on the banks of the river, and John walks over to me and says, "Are you all right, dear boy?" "Yeah, I'm all right."Collection: Kids
As much as I loved [Al] Pacino and [Robert] De Niro and wanted to be a dramatic actor, I also grew up on sitcoms.Collection: Actors
The thing you realize pretty quickly, though, is that being in front of an audience whose job it is to laugh is a big pressure if the writing is not hilarious.Collection: Jobs
Growing up, my father was a financial analyst for an oil company. He was just a regular dad. And when I would say, Hey, come see my play, hed say, Sure. Hed see one, Oh, good play - you know, very typical dad reaction.Collection: Growing Up
I think there's a certain objectivity that comes from being Canadian. You're partly British and partly American; you have a good bird's-eye view of both countries. So much of the comedy that comes out of Canada is impersonation - it's less 'look at me' than it is 'look at me playing other people.Collection: Country
Rachael Leigh Cook was my leading lady. She was awesome. We loved the show [Perception ]. Again, it was more of a TNT show, because there were crimes that got solved, which [going] back five years ago, was a mandate. But there was something innovative about the mental illness side of it.Collection: Years
There was not an episode [on Perception] that didn't deal with some form of mental illness, either my own, or I would be the first to notice if a defendant did a certain thing that perhaps he was suffering from this. And so we got to do some really outspoken stuff for what was otherwise a crime-solving show. And it was just a really good team.Collection: Team
Often, particularly with voices, you're hearing horrible things, demon voices, and voices telling them that they're not worth it or that they're going to kill somebody. In those moments, they're overcoming things.Collection: Voice
I grew up on M*A*S*H and All In The Family and Cheers. And then around this time, this would have been '95, '96, I was so into Friends and Mad About You, the idea of being on a sitcom became a very real thing that I wanted. It was not so much a relief. It was really exciting. It's an amazing thing to be in front of an audience.Collection: Cheer
Back then, all the networks were still making a movie a week, virtually. So I did five of them that year. So it was just a nonstop... '92 was a great, nonstop ride in Vancouver.Collection: Years
[Jack Nash] was very different than anything I'd played. In fact, there's a scene I have in a tent with Louis Ferreira, who just did an episode of Travelers. He was in the fourth episode of Travelers playing another team leader, and we really have it out, not unlike the way we did in the tent in Andromeda.Collection: Team
[Jack Nash from The Andromeda Strain] was not in the original film, but he was kind of a Geraldo Rivera almost kind of reporter that had a drug addiction. We start the story in rehab, and then he gets the roots of the story. I loved him.Collection: Roots
I really liked it [The Andromeda Strain], and I don't know that it ever had the effect they were hoping for. I don't know if they got the audience we were hoping for. But I thought it was very fun, and I loved the character [Jack Nash] I was playing.Collection: Fun
They [the Travelers] know everything about the year that they're coming into. But you can know everything and still be tripped up by the little stuff that you didn't notice. And one character's Facebook page is made up of lies. It's an interesting comment on what's been going on the last few months. We cannot rely anymore on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. People are making up their own truths.Collection: Lying
I made Lost World in September of '91, and by the end of that year, I was living in Toronto.Collection: Years
I think they [TV productions] were just kind of drying up. I'd done a couple of episodes, but nothing was happening. So I went to Vancouver to visit a buddy and see what was going on, and that year was crazy. Vancouver was on fire at that point. It was all these Stephen J. Cannell productions - The Commish being one of them - and in one I was a bartender, and I think I had five lines.Collection: Couple
I remember I had scenes with Melinda McGraw in "Ides Of March" that I didn't have in "Video Vigilante," but I can't quite picture that other character. But it was Vancouver, and that year was crazyCollection: Crazy
I did The Commish and an episode of Neon Rider, and then I got the series called Street Justice, which I ended up doing about 18 episodes of.Collection: Justice
So this ["Grant MacLaren"] was a chance to sort of go back and do a more leading man. But instead of just solving crimes like a CSI show, this leading man is, like the other travelers, not who he appears.Collection: Men
That was my big break [Lonesome Dove]. My first real kind of adult role on something really well-written. It was a spin-off of the miniseries, and I played Col. Mosby, a very dangerous, Southern colonel in post-Civil War, wandering the West.Collection: Real
When we started the show [Lonesome Dove], Suzanne De Passe - who had done the original miniseries and still owned the property and was turning it into this series - she brought in a lot of old friends - Diahann Carroll and Billy Dee Williams and Dennis Weaver. And we had an interesting collection off the top of these old seasoned actors. Billy Dee was lovely and iconic.Collection: Interesting
I'd done a pilot [of Townies] with Caroline Rhea [Pride & Joy] that didn't go anywhere.Collection: Pride
I did five episodes of Townies as Jenna Elfman's boyfriend. I was a guest star, but it was the first time I really got to play laughs in front of a sitcom audience.Collection: Stars
They're such different things [Townies and Lonesome Dove]. I certainly love them both. Certainly Lonesome Dove would be way hard now, because, I mean, back then I wasn't married.Collection: Mean
I have a big, long episode [in Full Circle] with Calista [Flockhart], and then my character actually carries out through a lot of it because he was a cop investigating this crime. But it is almost hard to remember, even though it wasn't that long ago. We shot it so fast. We literally shot that whole episode in one day.Collection: Character
Every actor has periods of their life that are a little less busy than others, and that was just a time when I needed that. And to be back on a sitcom stage, with Julia [ Louis-Dreyfus], was really, really fun.Collection: Fun
I love playing anyone that does stuff that I don't do. The fun of playing an assassin is that I've never killed anybody. The fun of playing a brilliant musician is that I don't actually play any instruments.Collection: Fun
It was a film [The Lost World], and it's a sequel at the same time. The first shot on the first day was from the sequel to the movie they hadn't made yet. But yeah, it was a pretty amazing experience running around the jungle for that.Collection: Running
I'd never been to Africa. This really was my first film [The Lost World]. I'd done 10 years of stage. I'd done a little bit of television. But this was my first film.Collection: Years
You make a lot of mistakes. I haven't seen that movie [The Lost World] in 20 years. But if I saw it, I'm sure I could pick out a whole lot of mistakes.Collection: Mistake
[The Lost world] was a learning experience. I remember we were shooting a scene in which I dive out of a boat into a river to save the kid that's in the movie. And there's no mention of a stuntman, and I was like, "No, I'll go in." Nobody questioned. I never asked if maybe there was malaria in the water. And I was wearing these tall boots.Collection: Kids
I was going to be the hero of the movie [The Lost World]. I had to speak up and be like, "Shouldn't I be the one doing that?Collection: Hero
I was working with David Warner and John Rhys-Davies, who is from the Indiana Jones movies.He's a very strong, strong presence, and so I had to assert myself.Collection: Strong
Brad Wright, who created Grant MacLaren, had me in mind. We'd actually worked together 20 years ago. He wrote an episode of The Outer Limits that I was in in '96 or '95? So we'd been aware of each other for years. I'd lived in Vancouver off and on, where he's based. And it just came to me, and I'm always looking for something different. Perception was a different show than Will & Grace.Collection: Years
I'm never one to compare shows to shows.Collection: Compare
The Andromeda strain is a killer disease that they've got to prevent from spreading to being 100 percent contagious. It's another one where we're racing to save humanity.Collection: Humanity
The things had been made a half a dozen times from silent pictures through the '30s and '40s. In fact, I think there's a version in the '50s. And then, of course, Spielberg eventually did a version of The Lost World, but this [filming] was '91, I think. And we shot it in Zimbabwe.Collection: Thinking
I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.Collection: Couple
[Townies] was a huge cast. It was a bit ungainly, I think with 12 regular characters they had to keep writing for.Collection: Writing
The three main leads [in Townies] were Lauren [ Graham] and Jenna [Elfman] and Molly [Ringwald], and then Ron Livingston was on it as well. There was a lot of people to write funny stuff for.Collection: Writing
[Townies] was a great springboard, obviously, because Jenna [Elfman] went from that to Dharma & Greg, and a few years later, Lauren [Graham] went to Gilmore Girls.Collection: Girl
In the '97 pilot season [of Will & Grace ], I got the male lead on The Jenny McCarthy Show.Collection: Grace
I was playing this sort of asshole actor [in The Jenny McCarthy Show]. And we shot the pilot, and it was a guaranteed go. It was going to be 24 [episodes] on the air. No questions from NBC. And we shot the pilot, and I was in Toronto doing a movie, and I got a call saying they cut the character, that I was off the show.Collection: Character
Whenever I see Tom [ Cavanagh] - we're good friends - we just mourn that we didn't get a longer shot.Collection: Good Friend
[Trust Me] was TNT, and they were really supportive of the show, but in the end they just didn't feel it was their audience. I never really understood why we didn't get a longer run at it, because it was Griffin Dunne and Monica Potter. Just a really strong cast.Collection: Running
I had run into Kari Lizer at an airport, I think, and she said, "Would you come on the show [ The New Adventures Of Old Christine]?" And I said, "God. Absolutely."Collection: Running
Seinfeld [show] had been so huge for me. It was one of those things where I discovered Seinfeld really early and was making sure everyone I knew was watching it. I would tape it on VHS and show it to people that hadn't seen the show yet.Collection: People
Andy Ackerman directed the episodes that I was doing, and he directed a lot of Seinfeld [episodes]. And that was great.Collection: Episodes