Denis O'Hare: Especially when it comes to something like the awards, I...

I was born in Missouri, but I was raised in Detroit. One of my stock and trades is accents.

Denis O'Hare

detroit accents born

I think all the characters in 'American Horror Story,' which is why I love it, are looking for some sense of meaning, and also it's their form of happiness.

Denis O'Hare

happiness character thinking

Michael Winterbottom is one of the great directors of this century.

Denis O'Hare

century directors

We see images of people being beheaded on TV. That's not a thing that you see all the time. That's a different kind of scary. Unfortunately, some of the scary stuff is political, and that's a change from our past.

Denis O'Hare

scary people past

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 views blood

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

love-is interesting thinking

We live in a world where we're all on computers and tablets and phones, all the time, so something as odd as computer hacking or a virus is really scary because it gets to the heart of our security.

Denis O'Hare

phones scary heart

Comic-Con is a special kind of crazy.

Denis O'Hare

crazy kind special

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 kids blood

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

taxi-cabs yelling new-york

I was a fan of 'Six Feet Under' and was very sad when it ended, so I was not ready to switch my allegiance to another show. So I was like, 'I'm not watching this 'True Blood.'' Then a friend got a bootleg copy of the first four episodes, and by the third one, I was irrevocably hooked.

Denis O'Hare

fans feet blood

I was a big fan of 'Six Feet Under.' So, I got a bootleg copy of the first four episodes on videotape, watched them and was instantly into it. During the first episode, I was like, 'Eh.' By the time I got to the second one, I couldn't watch them fast enough. I got on the phone that night, called Time Warner cable and ordered HBO right then.

Denis O'Hare

hbo phones night

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

tables years thinking

I received a phone call; my agent got a phone call from Ryan Murphy saying he wanted to talk to me... And he basically outlined 'American Horror Story' for me and said that there's a character named Larry the Burn Guy, and I'd like you to play it.

Denis O'Hare

horror-stories phones character

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 book way

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

hate dancing men

I read 'Dracula' in high school. I've been around vampires forever.

Denis O'Hare

high-school forever school

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

hearing stories mean

It's highly dishonorable to ever quit a production. I never have done it, and I can't imagine ever doing it. However, I have been in productions before where, on the first in the read-through, you feel that someone is in trouble, and indeed, actors have been let go shortly after read-throughs. I've seen that happen before.

Denis O'Hare

feel someone never you

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

great confession atheist book

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.