Frankly, to be honest, I hadn't worked for two years before 'Murphy Brown.' It's a nice illusion now to think of all of us as terribly successful and talented people at the top of our profession, but that's hindsight. I had to pray for a job like this.

I've always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pomposity. Starting when I was 30, I somehow gave off an impression at an audition that had them mentally put me in a three-piece suit or put an attache case in my hand. If there was a stiff-guy part, the director would brighten up when I came in.

It's funny because all through the '80s I didn't do TV and movies very much. I prided myself that I was making a living in the theater.

I come from a wonderful family. My mother was a pianist and my father was a salesman. They were very middle-class, very middle-Western.

I do need to explore my faith, because it has got lost over the years and it has been kind of tainted through experience. But I also know it's enriched my life, my dad being a Catholic.

To truly repent of a big thing, you have to go into it with your heart open and force yourself to deal with it at that level and to apologize to God.

So many kids are still sitting in pews being told they are not worthy of God's love. 'Sissies' will show them they are not alone, and I hope that healing will follow.

It was all a back-handed blessing, and my friends were the ones who kept the faith, read my work, and urged me to submit it to publishers (by sending it out for me - they would not hear no for an answer.