A good character makes your job a lot easier, I know it sounds corny but a really well written character makes it.
At the beginning, when I first started acting, for years I did theater.
But when I'm home, I'm home all the time with my kids, with my wife, with the farm.
But, you know, being a character actor enables you to be in different types of movies, and it changes you automatically.
Especially in an action movie, where it has more to do with you timing with the explosion or the helicopter coming through. There's not a lot of room for screwing around.
First time director, studio film, comedy, there's this list of people and I'm not on the list for the lead guys. I'm on the list for these guys over here.
I can't even explain it, living in a small town on the edge of the Sahara, I mean you're not visiting any more after a week.
I do work, but I have a lot of moments of downtime, too.
I don't care if you've just won an Oscar, you still have to campaign for parts.
I don't have a plan, I just want to do the next good thing for me.
I don't read novels, I read history.
I don't want to compete with Jude Law, nor should I.
I got good grades. I just told jokes and got through class.
I hate things that don't make sense.
I have a very traditional background.
I haven't done a play since '94, but I still go to work in the same way, with the same preparation and the same respect for the script and same respect for the director, and I'll be able to do whatever you want within your parameters, just let me go, blah, blah, blah.
I like micro histories. I like reading about little tiny events, not huge.
I live in an area that's really rich in Civil War history.
I live in Kentucky on a farm. Lot of military history I love.
I love Toronto, I have spent a lot of time up there working. There's a lot of stuff going on there.
I read a lot and I live in horse country, so I just read a book about two Confederate guerillas who came to the thoroughbred farms - my neighbors - and stole horses for their mounts and they were worth thousands and thousands of dollars.
I think if you're really in it, and if you're really an actor, you're always trying to get the good movie, to tell the good story.
I usually hook up to a film and then, in a month and a half, I'm out, gone.
I'd much rather go into something as an actor, and just try to make every moment real. Do you know what I mean? Playing a character, but not getting too wrapped up in it.
I'm a good dad; I spend a lot of time with my kids.
I'm always attracted to the vulnerable character more than I am the superhero. That's not interesting to me. I don't know anybody like that.
I'm like a kid still so if I read a script where there are fast cars I'm there.
I'm not a leading guy.
I'm theater trained.
I've done movies where you just show up on set and all of a sudden you're with another guy and you're acting with them and you don't know anything about them and that's hard.
In the end I'm probably home half the time.
It never ends, that never ends; it's never like you're sitting in the backyard on your lawn chair with your beer just kicked back waiting for the call.
It's got to be about the story. That's what I think my job is. I'm there to service the story.
Let me tell you something, planes and kids... I've got a 3 and 1 year old, I don't wish that on anybody.
Literally, I read the script a lot and I learn it, no matter what the part is - how big or small the part is. I put a lot of thought into it and I think about it constantly.
Most people laugh at situations rather than a tagline anyway.
Not that I think improv is bad, but I just rely more on a character than trying to think of something to say. If something comes out, it comes out.
So maybe I'll play the crazy sidekicks throughout my whole life and that will be fine. Or maybe I'll do sidekick parts and in five years it will be a different thing. I don't know, maybe.
The things that I laugh at are crazy people, people who take themselves so seriously. The guy mad in the grocery store line is funny. You put it in a movie and it's hysterical, if it's done right.
There's a lot of balancing involved, especially when you have people knowing what you do and associate you with certain types of characters.
We forget about listening. With kids, you have to because it's the only way you're going to be good - to react to what they're doing, and to mesh with them.
What it all really comes down to is reading a character that you think that you can do well. That's the hard part. finding that, and you hope that it falls into something like the war picture or the western.
When I show up on a film set, I don't want to worry in my trailer about what I'm doing. I want to play PlayStation because I don't get to play that at home.
When you're acting and you're pretending there's bees, you're pretending. You're not acting anymore because it's all about looking right as opposed to this movie where no, there's a real helicopter chasing us so you get a real reaction.
You don't have to be best friends to be best friends in a movie.
You have to listen to one another and you have to trust the director is going to be able to pull the things out that you do and piece it together in the right way.
You subconsciously know when actors are pretending to the air. It's just this fake video game.
You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from Star Search or Survivor or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.
Steve Zahn went to Gustavus Adolphus College and Harvard University.
Steve's first acting role was in the movie Biloxi Blues.
Steve Zahn can play the guitar.
Steve was the founder of the theater company called Malaparte.
Steve has a son named Henry James Zahn.
Steve Zahn met his wife during a 13-month national touring company of Bye Bye Birdie.
Steve Zahn's mother name is Zelda Clair Gades.
Steve Zahn is an avid fly fisherman.
Steve Zahn was raised in Minnesota.
Steve Zahn is married to Robyn Peterman.
Steve Zahn starred in Daddy Day Care,Saving Silverman,National Security, and Joy Ride.
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