It's almost an out of body experience to see things that First Officer Jeff Skiles and I said in the cockpit together, played by actors.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
On 'The Messenger,' just imagining playing the part of a soldier in that movie was kind of hard for me. And in 'Rampart,' the idea of playing a cop was even harder. It was hard to imagine myself as a cop.
I've heard that George Clooney did something like nine pilots before 'ER' was picked up, way back when he was doing TV. It's just the way the business works. There are a lot of pilots that we've never seen. It's protocol.
As an actor... at some point you've got to forget that the crew's there in order to do your job.
Before we shot the pilot, I knew what 'Dallas' was, but I actually was too young to remember the details of the show. I didn't have my hands on the DVDs, so I YouTubed everything I could of J.R.
I was in the pilot for Spinal Tap before it was a movie.
I saw and I met a lot of people who were in the field. It also provided a context in which I came to respect what the actor did, because I saw how difficult it actually was to do.
For me, a career highlight was being on 'Battlestar Galactica.' Roles like that don't come along very often.
I remember working on movies like Gettysburg and feeling that Jeff Daniels was kind of a mentor.
The great privilege it has been to work with some of the most talented people on the face of the earth. My first scene in a movie was with James Cagney, for goodness sakes. There I was, just out of the U.S. Navy without an acting lesson to my name.
I think that came out of watching all those serious movies for all that time. If you watch a movie like Zero Hour, Sterling Hayden is pretty funny, and so are the guys in the cockpit.