Latest Richard Schiff Quotes from Interviews

• I had been used to improvising and even in the audition I was feeling free to rearrange Aaron Sorkin words a little bit, as lovely as they were. I didn't find out until after I got the part how furious Aaron was at me for doing that. They said, "He was livid. He did everything in his power not to jump down your throat!" But I came to realise that Aaron was writing in metre and the rhythm of the language is very important.

  Richard Schiff

  Writing, Feelings, Lovely

  "The Definitive History Of The West Wing: Part 2. Inauguration". www.empireonline.com.

• If you go to the real West Wing in the White House it looks like a boring law office; there's really not a whole lot going on in series. The moulding is frayed, the carpet is a little dirty; it's not exciting.

  Richard Schiff

  Real, Dirty, Office

• You had actors that came from live theatre and it felt like you're doing a play. Every time we did a three or four minute walk-and-talk in the West Wing, the exhilaration of going on stage would be a part of it.

  Richard Schiff

  Theatre, Like You

• I go in to Warner Brothers to test and in the waiting area I saw Allison Janney sitting there, who I did not know but I was a big fan of. I said to myself, "Wait a second. These guys might know what they're doing if they're hiring her."

  Richard Schiff

  Brother, Guy, Waiting

  "The Definitive History Of The West Wing" by James Dyer, www.empireonline.com.

• I didn't expect NBC would be at all thrilled about me, because the year before the West Wing I had rejected a pilot at the last minute and got them very upset. I ended up not coming to the casting - in fact it happened four different times because I just wasn't convinced that I wanted to do television.

  Richard Schiff

  Upset, Different, Rejected

  Source: www.empireonline.com

• I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing. I missed her first words. I missed her first steps. I'd leave work before she woke up and got home after she was asleep and didn't really know her. So it was important for that reason to reintroduce myself to the family after all of that hard work.

  Richard Schiff

  Daughter, Hard Work, Home

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The political nonsense of network television and the culture of a set and all the problems that that can create, I can take. I can't take betraying the truth of what I'm doing. It cuts to the absolute core of everything that I do in the craft, in this world that I live in.

  Richard Schiff

  Cutting, Political, Culture

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I still have the mentality of someone who doesn't know where he's going to sleep and doesn't know if he has enough money for gas to get to the next job interview. I don't think that mentality ever leaves, you know?

  Richard Schiff

  Sleep, Thinking, Enough

  Source: www.avclub.com

• There's a genetic memory that stays on your bones. What you experience when you're young, I think it stays with you.

  Richard Schiff

  Memories, Thinking, Bones

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I would love to be in the position where the role is challenging enough that I need three months to prepare for it and then six months to live the life of character.

  Richard Schiff

  Live Life, Character, Challenges

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I turned down a lot of things - some very lucrative - because I could afford to at that time. That didn't lead to a happy place. I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing.

  Richard Schiff

  Daughter, My Family, Happy Place

  Source: www.avclub.com

• My parents grew up in the Depression. Despite the success that they both had in their lives, there's a certain mentality that tells you to finish all the food that's on your plate and not wasting anything and appreciating what's on the table.

  Richard Schiff

  Appreciate, Parent, Mentality

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Most actors, unless they're big movie stars and can carve out huge chunks of time to focus on one movie that takes six months - the rest of us have to jump around to make ends meet.

  Richard Schiff

  Focus, Big Movie, Movie Star

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Surviving the grind of 18-hour days and getting up at four in the morning to work out for an hour so I'd have the energy to do it again the next day. I did not know I had that discipline. I did not know I had the discipline to learn a seven-page scene in three hours to shoot that day or the next day. I didn't know that I was capable of realizing that potential.

  Richard Schiff

  Morning, Work Out, Discipline

  Source: www.fanbolt.com

• One of the great things about the old days of television, 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, was that it was water cooler television. People would communally watch the same hour. People used to tell us all the time, we turn off the phones, we put the kids to bed and that one hour is uninterrupted. Then, the next day at the water cooler, they all talk about it.

  Richard Schiff

  Kids, People, Water

  Source: www.fanbolt.com

• Playing a TV character for seven years is almost like when you do a play. You live, breathe, and everything else with that character 24-7 for six months or four months or whatever, and that gets very deep in your blood. When you do a TV character for seven years, that's a long time. It becomes a seminal era in your life.

  Richard Schiff

  Character, Long, Breathe

  Source: www.fanbolt.com

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