ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: In the years since Dead Poets, was there ever a time you thought you wanted to be a big movie star?
ROBERT SEAN LEONARD: No. Maybe because I never really did. I remember, Robby Benson was in a movie called One on One. I remember seeing that when I was young, and I remember literally bouncing around after the movie, I loved it so much. But my thought wasn't, ''Oh, I want to be in a movie.'' I just loved the movie. I think that's always stuck. I definitely feel it with plays. I see one and say, ''Oh, I want to play that role,'' or ''Oh, I wish I played that role instead of that guy.'' I think even at a young age I was so aware of the chasm between what you see on the screen and what it is to actually make [a movie] that it never occurred to me to desire it.
When you got your first movie, did you realize that it wasn't going to be glamorous?
I had done a couple of TV movies. One movie called The Manhattan Project, with Cynthia Nixon and John Lithgow, a small, small part. Mostly I had done theater. Poets...I couldn't believe when I got that movie. I remember seeing Ethan at everything. We never got it. River got it, or Keanu got it. I remember auditioning for Revolution, the Al Pacino movie, and I have memories of auditioning for movies, but it was just something you had to do. You never got any callback. You just had to go because your agent told you to go. You never met the directors, you'd just get on tape and it would be sent to L.A. I couldn't believe I got a callback. I think that was just Peter Weir — he wanted unknown guys. He didn't want anybody to be recognizable in that movie. I don't think he wanted any preconceived notions about any of these guys. He was smart, that's one of the reason this movie works. We seem real. We seem like a bunch of boys. It's not like, ''Oh, it's six guys and River Phoenix.'' It's a bunch of guys you don't know. That's part of the joy of the movie.
What's impressive about your acting on House is that you could so easily be the always-perturbed guy going, "Hou-ouse!" But you manage to make it understandable why these two would be friends.
I feel like that guy all the time. I always feel like, everyone on every television show is tired of something with their character. What I like about Law & Order is it's kind of the same every week. That's what TV is. Someone once explained to me the difference between a procedural show and a character-driven show: they were talking about Law & Order when Elizabeth Rohm was on. He said, ''I can explain to you what it is in one question: Do you care if Sam Waterston sleeps with Elizabeth Rohm?'' I said, ''No, not really.'' And he said, ''It's a procedural.'' And he was right. If Sam Waterston's character slept with Elizabeth Rohm's character, I honestly wouldn't want to know about it. I'm much more interested in getting back to the crime. I think House is a weird combination. That might be one of the reason it works on some level. I don't know any other show that's both. It really is both. It's not Grey's Anatomy, it's not a nighttime soap. It is a procedural. There is a sausage-grinder of a routine we go through every week. There are four acts, or three. Something's wrong, we get it wrong, we get it wrong, we get it wrong, and then at 9:47, we get it right. It's clearly a procedural show, but the characters are pretty interesting for a procedure. I'm the guy who's always telling him what he's doing wrong. I feel a little bit like the frustrated wife or something. But these two guys are very mysterious to me, their relationship is very weird. Maybe that's one of the reasons it works. I like Hugh a lot ,and I love what he does on the show. I feel quite peripheral to it sometimes, and that might be another reason it works. I just come in and check things out every few scenes.
Now that you have seven weeks off, what are you going to do?
I'm going to meet my friend Craig, go to Bed Bath and Beyond. I'm so excited. On my break I don't really do anything. I just exist in New York and I'm just happy. When I got back, I got on the 3rd Avenue bus, rode it all the way up[town], and then took the 2nd Avenue back down. I'm not ashamed to admit it's not the first time I've done that. Especially on a rainy day. It's great. You get the New York Times, you get on a bus, you go all the way uptown, cross over, and come all the way back. I love it. I find it really lulling, I don't know why. Especially now, the buses are so beautiful. The windows are so big, they're a great view. I still have a little bit of a crush on New York. It's just comforting to be in this city.
The show is a trade-off, then: the better it does, the longer you'll be away from New York.
It's a great trade-off. I long to be home, but I like picking the check up as much as the next guy. And the money's great [in TV]. And theater...I don't know anyone who's done 20 years of theater who doesn't really value money. Because boy oh boy you don't get [any money there]. So to me this is a small miracle to get the money I'm getting for pretending I'm another human being and wear a tailored lab coat. It's ludicrous. Especially [since] my brother's a policeman and my sister's an English teacher. Believe me, the absurdity is not lost on me. But it makes sense. Should Andy Pettitte make 749 times what a cop makes? Morally, I don't know. But it makes sense, if the Yankees make this much a year, and he's 11 percent of the reason they make this much. The math works, even though it's absurd. I'm glad the show's a hit, I wouldn't have it any other way, and I also curse it and miss my home. Both things exist equally in my head.
NEXT PAGE: ''We saw Mamma Mia together. One of the more surreal experiences in my life, watching the Abba musical with Burt Reynolds.''
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