You don't have a face to work with, so your voice has to do all the work until you see the animation. So, a lot of it I had to pull back because it was too big.

No one could have ever dreamed about how well the show would do.

But when I did think about it and looked at the whole package - the producers behind the show, the writers, the cast I would be working with - I would have been a fool to turn it down just because the role for me was another gay role.

You don't have a face to work with, so your voice has to do all the work until you see the animation. So, a lot of it I had to pull back because it was too big.

I got one letter at the very beginning, like, in the first season, saying - from a woman who was very religious, very Christian, saying how wrong she thought the show was, but she thinks it's the funniest show on television.

And I'd like to believe that's true, you know, kind of showing gay people in this kind of light and - where it's not about that, it's just about the characters for the first time, like those shows were.

I actually like working with the other three actors on the show.

The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date.

They might have a long way to go before truly accepting gay people into their lives, but they have accepted the show into their living rooms each and every week.

Nobody makes me laugh.

Through that, I got to know Jerry's work, and I am definitely his number-one fan right now, which is interesting because it usually works the other way around: you usually create a project based on your hero.

And I'm OK being judged as an actor.

And so, I think when I got to college, you discover who you are and find yourself more than you did before.

At the beginning of 'Will and Grace', I played Jack as the funny next-door-neighbor type, as we've seen in the past. And I thought that was my role.

Being an actor, the less people know about my personal life, the more open-minded they can be about each role I play.

But I'm guessing every actor is insecure.

I have the most nervous stomach in the world.

I like to be busy and I like to have places to go in the morning, when I get up.

I think because my life is so insane and it's constantly going at 120 miles per hour, my favorite thing to do is sit at home in front of the TV and check out.

I'm a huge sci-fi/fantasy/horror guy. I love anything in the sci-fi or fantasy genre.

No, my entire life is planned. It's called time management.

So get accomplished what you want to get accomplished in your life. And in the intervals, do what you can to help other people.

The thing about producing is that the pressure is off of being in front of the camera, and being critiqued and judged in that way, but there are other pressures producing.

When I came out of my mom's womb, I had 'sitcom' stamped on my forehead.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

One of the best animated films I've seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn't crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan's face, but the traditional animation was spectacular.

Animation is tremendously resilient. Animation will recover, as art always recovers. There's always cycles of good art.

When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.

But probably for the last ten years or so, I've been fitting in animation work into my other projects.

So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.

Animation scripts tend to be much more descriptive and are lighter on dialogue.

I know pretty well in the broad sense what I'm going to do, because I have to know that when we shoot the live-action, so that it'll synchronize. Then I know pretty well when I get to the animation stage, what that scene requires.

The success of The Simpsons really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn't necessarily have to be working in kids' television.

I love doing the voice of Batman because of the quality of the animation. The music is particularly incredible. Another bonus is getting the opportunity to work with some very respected actors who do not usually do voice work.

We go through, I think, six different drafts of each script. And then my shooting it is roughly, you know, fifteen percent of the total work that gets done on a show. Then it's all post-production animation after that.

Look what Disney's done to their animation department. There wasn't an animator in charge of their animation unit!

I miss animation very passionately. Not continuously, but every once in a while I would die to do another film.

The animation of the canvas is one of the hardest problems of painting.

Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.

In animation, there's this exhilarating moment of discovery when you see the film and you say, Oh THAT'S what I was doing.

Yes, actually. Animation's a very easy thing to watch on tour.

If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.

In the animation world, people who understand pencils and paper usually aren't computer people, and the computer people usually aren't the artistic people, so they always stand on opposite sides of the line.

Well, for one thing, the executives in charge at Cartoon Network are cartoon fans. I mean, these are people who grew up loving animation and loving cartoons, and the only difference between them and me is they don't know how to draw.

You don't have a face to work with, so your voice has to do all the work until you see the animation. So, a lot of it I had to pull back because it was too big.

We always thought the Tom Tom Club could change to anything, but it acquired this image, which was cartoon animation and this real light-hearted dance music.

Animation had been done before, but stories were never told.

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

I did what we call dry for wet effects, some of the miniatures work and two animation sequences.