Prison Break's Robert Knepper

Look, one of these days maybe I'll get an Emmy, and I'll thank Prison Break for that. It was a break, it put me on the map, it put us all on the map. There's a lot of great, iconic characters on television, and their actors who are still alive. Henry Winkler will always be the Fonz, y'know? That's the reason I wanted to go to Heroes right away, I wanted another job, I didn't want people to have time to say, "he's that guy, that's all he does," even though I had been acting for like 20 years by that point.

I just wanted to totally do something different, so I don't care what people recognise me from, so long as they rec... so long as they watch the work.

That was a great series. Such a well-written show.

Yeah. American actors, we tend to pigeonhole people because maybe that's all they can do? I dunno. My influences when I started acting weren't the American guys, they were the English actors, because they were able to transform themselves and be different people. That's acting to me. I never understood the whole thing of just be the same guy, look the same way, sound, walk, talk, everything. No, I need to be Stephen Sondheim or the woman who sings, "I never do anything twice, mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm..." [Humming continues for a while.]

We had this great thing in the States called the County Fair. Each county in Middle America has a fair, and they used to book these Hollywood or TV personalities, like a guy called Frankie Fontaine who was on the Jackie Gleeson show. He always played this character named Crazy Guggenheim, who was a drunk and a goofball, but Frankie Fontaine had this Basso Prodondo voice. He would come out and starting singing. [Knepper starts singing French words in a lounge voice. This continues for a short while.] I always think I'm never gonna work again, the only thing I'm ever going to do is be relegated to travelling the country, and doing the county fair circuit, singing T-Bag's favourite hits. That's my worst nightmare.

Yeah, Prison Break changed all that. I'd always been able to watch people without them knowing I was watching them, to develop characters, to write notes, and all of a sudden people were watching me. It's something an actor always dreams about happening. I don't know one actor that won't admit this. We wanna work, and we wanna do great work, but we also wanna be in a position where we have some clout.

You can't do that unless you're somebody. So part of the business of showbusiness is saying I surrender to the fact that I know that in order to play the great parts, I have to be known. And in order to be known I have to play a part that people really want to watch. And because they're watching me I have to give up anonymity.