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
I'm thrilled to get hired every once in a while.
I've been able to do a lot of interesting things.
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.
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.
In TV, when you're doing guest roles, you're gliding into a zone where people are already very comfortable. They go in and go to work every day. You're coming in, and it's a brand-new environment, so you have to get it... and then you're gone again.
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.
You have to remind casting directors out here that you don't just do one thing. There's a lot of people who do just one thing.
The more you work, the more people see your work and would like to work with you, and vice versa.
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.
Movies are an editor's medium.
It's good for you to go somewhere that you wouldn't normally go.
In order for comedy to be funny you have to play the truth of the moment. But if you're not being completely truthful to the basis of the character, its not going to be funny.