Stephen Root
Stephen Root
Stephen Edward Rootis an American actor and voice actor. He has starred as Jimmy James on the TV sitcom NewsRadio, as Milton Waddams in the film Office Space and as the voices of Bill Dauterive and Buck Strickland in the animated series King of the Hill. His other roles have included Captain K'Vada in the Star Trek: The Next Generation feature-length episode "Unification", and Gordon Pibb in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth17 November 1951
CitySarasota, FL
CountryUnited States of America
Television sitcom means a little play each week in front of a live audience. On film, you might spend all day on one scene, doing it from different angles, and they can be more interesting sometimes due to the script, or nature of the project. So I enjoy both mediums for different reasons.
People are on their computers more than watching TV, because you can only watch voyeur TV, which is basically what reality shows are, for so long.
I'm lucky I get to work a lot.
I'm from New York, so I'm a big Howard Stern fan.
The ratio of people to cake is too big.
I've been able to do a lot of interesting things.
My goal as an actor was to work - to be a working actor, whether it was in theater, and, well, I didn't even consider film and television when I was in New York, but what came along, came along.
I'm more interested in knowing my cues than my lines. If you know what your cues are, then you know what your reaction is going to be to them. Acting is about reacting, and if I can kind of purely react, that's easier for me.
Movies are an editor's medium.
It's so hard to make a living as an actor, with 95% of the SAG members unemployed at one time. That includes all the different unions, too, that unless you HAVE to do it, that it's in your soul and you MUST do it you feel, don't do it.
It's easier to play a dim character, for me, because I have a natural bent for comedy. It's not intrinsic for me to be crafty, so I would have to go outside for a source of origin. I think of myself as pretty dim.
It's good for you to go somewhere that you wouldn't normally go.
My whole career, I've tried to bounce back and forth between everything, and not get typed out. I've done a pretty good job of not getting typed.
Researching real people and doing them, I think, is harder than anything else. You don't want to do a caricature of them and you don't want to do an impression. You just want to do the best you can, in terms of presenting their views and a general impression of the guy. That's the hardest thing to do, real people.