Chris Messina

For the longest time, I was always like a guy that people would think they went to high school with. They'd be like, 'How do I know you?' After, we'd play a guessing game. I'd say, 'I'm an actor,' and they'd go, 'Oh, what have you been in?' I'd list my credits, and they wouldn't really remember me.

I don't have much interest in gingerbread houses - except in eating them.

I like romance in films. I like love in films.

I haven't watched a lot of television, but when I was kid, I watched 'All in the Family,' and I liked Archie and Edith a lot.

I don't know if women gravitate toward me, or I gravitate toward them.

Honestly, one of my favorite things about a director is when they understand what an actor brings to their role.

'The Mindy Project' is really best when you're loose, and we improvise a lot, and that's what's best.

When you do a movie, you shoot, and then you go away. A lot of the times you walk about from the movie, you say, 'Oh, I get that scene now... Oh, that whole ending - I wish I could have done another shot.'

When I'm doing a drama, I like to find the comedy; when I'm doing a comedy, I like to find the heart and drama.

The truth is really funny. It's uncomfortable sometimes, it's dramatic sometimes, but it's really funny. Life is funny.

I like talking about acting. I'm comfortable talking about acting.

I was in a movie called 'Before & After' with Meryl Streep. I was edited out of the movie, but no one told me. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. I sat across from her and asked her every question about acting. I completely embarrassed myself.

My mom was a dance teacher, so she put me in dance school when I was a kid. I did everything. I used to take ballet.

A lot of acting, as I grew up wanting to do, is kind of like magic... I'm not comparing myself to him in the least bit, but if you knew what Daniel Day-Lewis was doing every step of the way and what he was eating, I don't think when he popped up as Lincoln we would quite believe it.

I was so bad in school that acting gave me some kind of identity and gave me a home.

When you go to a college for acting, at least the college I went to, it's like everybody just singing and dancing and acting, and they all come together, and everyone's talking about head shots... It just turned me off. I was like, 'What is this? I don't understand this. People are singing in the hallways.'

I did a lot of small black-box theater in New York when I was starting out. I'd get a group of actors together to do workshops and readings. And I ended up directing three or four productions.

That is the fun of being an actor. You play all different kinds of people.

One of the interesting parts of being on a television show is you often don't know the fate of your character until you're reading the script. I always look forward to finding out.

You don't get to rehearse much on TV. You are kind of rehearsing on film. Depending on the way you work, that's either a good thing or a bad thing.

How precise you need to be when you're in a comedy, and the honesty you need and to have those two things meet up and have the execution just right, I always found very difficult.

I honestly think comedy is probably the hardest stuff to do.

The main thing about doing a comedy is that you spend most of your days really happy and laughing.

I am a big fan of movies from the '70s.

Doing something like 'Damages,' I played a character with post-traumatic stress. I was playing with sleep deprivation. I was not sleeping; I stayed up for three days at a time, drinking Red Bull. I would get shaky and tired and hyper.