Jake Johnson

“When I was growing up, I used to love television. TV was everything. And it was a real connector for my family.”

“I was an out-of-work actor for 10 years.”

“When you do a Tom Cruise movie, you don't do a Tom Cruise movie and ask a lot of questions.”

“I think you can meet the right girl at the wrong time, and it gets screwed up. If you meet the right girl at the wrong time, that girl has to be the most understanding person in the world because there's going to be a lot more bumps in the road.”

“My big break was really Liz Meriwether saw me in a movie called 'Paper Heart' and really liked it, and then saw me in a movie called 'Ceremony' because she knew Max Winkler and said, 'I want you to be in 'No Strings Attached,' but you gotta audition for it.' From that it was easier for her to get me in 'New Girl.'”

“I had a lot of bad jobs but the one big internship I had is I interned for 'SNL' when I was 21 years old and that was the joke. You intern there and you think man, I'm going to be with the writers and the great comedians. Then you're getting everybody sandwiches and then the doors close and then all the great creatives are doing the work.”

“I wanted to be a second baseman for the Chicago Cubs. Problem is that my athletic abilities in my mind are greater than what my body can accomplish.”

“People ask me, 'Did you ever want to be a live-action Peter Parker?' Are you kidding me? These actors live in a gym and wear really uncomfortable tights for 14 hours a day. And it's not like you're doing some very fun acting. Shooting is a real drag. Then you do press for five months? I don't think I could get it.”

“Alex Kurtzman - he's one of the nicest guys.”

“I moved to Los Angeles in January 2004 because a buddy of mine, who I met at a friend's wedding, said he could get me a room in his apartment for $500 a month. I took it thinking that it would probably only be about six months before I moved back to Chicago, but I fell in love with it.”

“I always thought, if you're gonna do TV, you want to play a straight, solid, pillar-of-the-show kind of guy.”

“I've been lucky enough to have a lot of romantic leads in movies and indies, and you do form a different kind of connection when you do that together as actors.”

“My dream career would be to be in things that have real heart and are telling real stories but while doing that, you're getting really big laughs. I don't necessarily love the straight crazy comedies. 'Caddyshack' is amazing, but there's not a lot of new 'Caddyshack's.”

“Sometimes, when you work with directors who have done it a lot and are established in the business and know the game, there are all these rules that they have. First-time directors will allow you to come in with choices. They're not so jaded by actors that they're like, 'Ugh, just do your job, man.'”

“In L.A., if you're in improv, and you're on those stages, all the big agents and managers and producers are watching those shows. They're not flying to Chicago to see the show. People are booking jobs off the stages in L.A. who aren't more talented than the guys in Chicago. But the most guys book out of L.A., and the second is New York.”

“You know, I'll tell you, nothing changed after 'No Strings' for me. A lot of people said, like, 'Your game will be different,' but it wasn't. It really wasn't.”

“I've been a fan of Prince my whole life.”

“I think that Zoe Kazan is an unbelievable talent.”

“I knew I wanted to be an actor for a long time, but I was based out of Chicago and then I went to New York and I did 'The Upright Citizens Brigade' out there. I had a two-man show with a guy named Oliver Ralli who's now in the band Pass Kontrol, which is a big band out of New York.”

“I'll be honest, I like shooting 'New Girl.' I like the people. The show is still new to me. I've never done TV like this before.”