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I really did sneak into Broadway shows, starting when I was 12.

I did a play in high school, then one in college. My first professional experience was off-off-Broadway. I'm conveniently blocking the title. I'm sure I was terrible.

When I started out I was a failed actor.

I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

I lived with this tremendous fear of failure because my father was a playwright and a director, and I think he did a couple of things as a child as an actor as well, and he... he failed, basically.

Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me.

I was a failed actor, but for 25 years, I got to go on stage anyway, and I loved it. I've still got the day job, and the travel bug.

My early days in Broadway were all comedies. I never did a straight play on Broadway.