Birthday: Sept. 20, 1956.
Birthplace: I was born in Chicago and I grew up in Rolling Meadows.
Occupation: Actor.
Current home: Los Angeles.
Marital status: Married to Teddi Cole for eight years.
Children: Mary, 7.
Working on: I’m in “Closer” at Steppenwolf Theatre through Aug. 27 and I have a film, “The Gift,” with Cate Blanchett and Hilary Swank, coming out this fall.
The last good movie I saw: “High Fidelity.”
I stay home to watch: “Behind the Music” on VH1, “The E! True Hollywood Story” and baseball.
The book I’ve been reading: “Inside Out” by Walter Bernstein (Da Capo, paperback) about the Hollywood blacklist in the ’50s.
Favorite meal: Chicago pizza, of course.
Favorite performers: Al Pacino and Meryl Streep.
I’m better than anyone else when it comes to: Finding the simplest way.
If I could do it over: I would never have believed anything anyone ever said to me or about me in Hollywood. The town lives in a perpetual state of B.S.
I’d give anything to meet: I would have loved to have met Walter Matthau. He was kind of a genius. I watch “The Fortune Cookie,” the first movie he made with Jack Lemmon, regularly. He won an Oscar for it.
My fantasy is: I’m playing center field in Wrigley Field.
The one thing I can’t stand: People who don’t mind their own business.
If I could change one thing about myself: I’d like to have more of an ability to let things roll off my back.
Most humbling experience: A nightmare audition where Murphy’s Law was in effect and anything that could have gone wrong did. I was left so humbled and humiliated that I wanted to say to everybody in the room, “I’ll come back another time when you aren’t all so preoccupied.” I didn’t, but I wish I had. It was for some Melanie Griffith movie. I don’t know if it ever got made. I hope it didn’t.
The two words that best describe me: Direct and driven.
