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" I was born in Missouri, but I was raised in Detroit. One of my stock and trades is accents. "
Denis O'Hare
Missouri
I Was Born
Detroit
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" Probably I have more phobias, fear and eccentricities than I would care to admit. I don't think I'm in danger of losing my mind, but I do often question my own behavior. I have a very bad temper, and it's not always healthy for me and for others. I make my way in the world more difficult, and I could do with a little more yoga. "
Denis O'Hare
Care
Mind
Think
" I'm a little bit of an obsessed artist, and I'm not very talented. But isn't Suzanne Somers a bad painter? "
Denis O'Hare
Talented
Artist
Bad
" I love monsters, I love creatures, I love beings, I love aliens. That's more supernatural and more the stuff of fairy tales. Fairy tales are as ancient as we are. I love those stories. I think they're really interesting because they always have more than simply the fright aspect. There's something deeply psychological. "
Denis O'Hare
Interesting
Always
Fairy
" I moved to New York City in '92 and had no money. I had a lot of free time, as actors do. I would go to the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. "
Denis O'Hare
New York
City
Go
" I read 'Dracula' in high school. I've been around vampires forever. "
Denis O'Hare
Been
High School
School
" I somewhat resist the whole gay rights-vampire rights metaphor because it is fraught with problems. I don't want to be seen as a gay man as a blood-sucking killer. I don't think it is the way to win hearts and minds. "
Denis O'Hare
Man
Minds
Problems
" For all the import and message of 'The Iliad,' it's ultimately a story that's meant to be heard, and the person hearing 'The Iliad' determines what it means. "
Denis O'Hare
Person
Message
Meant To Be
" I think it was 1987 - something like that - or '86, and I thought, 'When you go equity and you're gonna get paid, you'll finally be able to make a living.' But it was not to be so. I always bartended and waited tables so I ended up not doing theater for about a year because nobody would hire me. "
Denis O'Hare
Thought
Think
Me
" There are values on Broadway that are dangerous: it's got to be Best Musical, it's got to make money, it's got to run a certain amount of time. Nowhere in this, of course, is there any mention of quality. "
Denis O'Hare
Time
Run
Quality
" Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important. "
Denis O'Hare
Think
Work
You
" I hate singing. I hate dancing. I enjoyed doing 'Cabaret' and 'Assassins,' but I would wither up and die in 'The Music Man.' "
Denis O'Hare
Music
Singing
Die
" I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book. "
Denis O'Hare
Which
Atheist
Book
" My first paying gig was a play called 'The Voice of the Prairie' at a theater that no longer exists in Chicago called Wisdom Bridge. I played a fast-talking radio huckster - a salesman of crystal sets in the 1920s - and I actually won an award. Look at that! And then promptly didn't get hired for a year. "
Denis O'Hare
Award
Bridge
Wisdom
" And I guess I'm a kid at heart in that when I go for entertainment, I want to be totally transported. I want to go somewhere else; I want to encounter different things, different beings, different universes. And so I love that aspect of being able to play those things in both 'True Blood' and in 'American Horror Story.' "
Denis O'Hare
Heart
Love
Play
" Comic-Con is a special kind of crazy. "
Denis O'Hare
Kind
Special
Crazy
" Anybody who knows me has said, 'I had a Denis O'Hare moment.' I suppose in the kindest instance it means standing up for yourself. In the unkindest, it means the crazy guy in the street. "
Denis O'Hare
Me
Moment
Crazy
" I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry. "
Denis O'Hare
Poet
Had
Little
" You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate. "
Denis O'Hare
Body
You
Understand
" I've been acting for a long time, and I've done a lot of things, and I've been maintaining my anonymity pretty well. I get recognized once a week, at most, here and there, so I'm reluctant to give that up. "
Denis O'Hare
Time
Long
Week
" I was raised on the brothers Grimm, but my favorite fairy tales in the world are Oscar Wilde's - 'The Nightingale and the Rose,' 'The Selfish Giant.' The latter is probably my all-time favorite. "
Denis O'Hare
Fairy
World
Selfish
" I went to Northwestern in Chicago, in Evanston, and then I ended up trickling down in Chicago theater. I did a bunch of plays, but I was non-equity. For a lot of people, non-equity means you're not yet professional. But for me, if you're in a mainstream theater, you're doing something real. "
Denis O'Hare
Up
You
Professional
" Especially when it comes to something like the awards, I find it kind of baffling that 'True Blood' has been snubbed so many times given the incredible range of acting they have on there; I mean, incredible storytelling and the incredible production values. "
Denis O'Hare
Kind
Values
True
" I read five books on the Constitution. My favorite was 'Plain, Honest Men' by Richard Beeman. I went on a science jag in the same way. I kept getting in arguments about evolution and being bested. So I read Charles Darwin's 'On the Origin of the Species,' a fantastic book that is not that difficult. "
Denis O'Hare
Men
Constitution
Book
" When I did 'Racing Demon' by David Hare, I worked with Paul Giamatti, who had stacks of books in his dressing room. I was offstage a lot, so I would go read in his room. He was reading a four-part series on the Byzantine Empire by Alexander A. Vasiliev. I read two of those during the run of the play. "
Denis O'Hare
Reading
Run
Dressing
" If you see me in New York, you'll probably see me on my bicycle riding furiously between a city bus and a taxi cab, hitting one of them on the side and yelling at them. "
Denis O'Hare
Riding
You
New York
" I guess the big thing to say about 'Pig Farm' is that none of us knows if it works, and we're going in blind. It's in the tradition of 'Urinetown,' kind of - but that's a pretty small tradition. It's possible that it can fail. "
Denis O'Hare
Farm
Kind
Blind
" Generally, it's a great exercise to not get stuck in one medium too long because you begin to lose perspective on the peculiar drawbacks and strengths of the medium. For example, if I'm in the back of the stage and I want you to see my emotional change by a flicker of my eyelid, we're all going to be in for a long boring evening. "
Denis O'Hare
Long
Change
You
" Funnily enough, I was a big fan of the show and had been watching it - along with everybody else - and had never imagined that I would be on it. You kind of look at shows and think, 'Oh, I wish I had done that one.' But I didn't really see myself on 'True Blood.' "
Denis O'Hare
Think
Enough
Myself
" I was actually a poetry major in college before I punted and decided to become a theater major. I wrote the poem that we put on the sauerkraut boxes in the style of Elling. "
Denis O'Hare
Poetry
Style
Become
" I guess I didn't even know the word 'genre' until I did 'True Blood.' That's how naive I was, and I didn't realize that there was a point of view about certain types of TV. And so I guess I found it disappointing that there is a segment of the critical community that looks at genre as something that is separate, less than. "
Denis O'Hare
Community
View
Point Of View