William Petersen Quotes

If I stayed a football player, my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is, my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports, but I found I could have a more profound impact on people.

I get a lot of stuff from Germany – stuffed bugs and tarantulas.

I didn’t want to play a lawyer. I didn’t want to play a doctor. I didn’t want to play a single dad. I wanted to do something I felt I could learn from, something that would be a challenge and something that would not dry up.

If I could change on thing about myself, I would: Have better knees. Mine are shot because of injuries. You’re only as good as your legs, whether you’re an athlete or an actor.

I’ve been telling anybody who would listen that I wanted to do a series for the last 10 years. But I wouldn’t do it if I was just another cop pushing bad guys up against the wall.

Now I’m seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It’s gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I’m scared I might be a celebrity.

Grissom is pretty asexual. He’s not that interested in anything other than work – except for Lady Heather. She’s the closest to getting his heart of anyone.

Theater in Chicago will always be my first love.

When we get involved in the ratings, then we’re doing the network’s job. We need to focus on our work.

The show can go on without me, and probably will, but I want to come back to act in Chicago. My wife and I just bought a condo downtown, and I want to do theater.

I know a lot of actors who’ve just gotten bitter because they did something and then nobody ever saw it or whatever.

Grissom is a character who doesn’t really want people poking around in his life. He likes to poke around in his work.

I want to live and work in Chicago for the rest of my life. You know when you were growing up and you wanted to become president? What I want now is to be mayor of this damned town in ten years.

The beard is here because I got tired of shaving and Grissom, subsequently, got tired of shaving. Grissom, like any other 50-year-old man, is going through a series of mid-life changes. Who knows, he may start drinking.

Basically, we are a whole world of people desperately trying to figure out what is the dark side of our natures and how much can we explore without becoming something else.

Sure, I always chose rebels to identify with – I still do – but to me a rebel isn’t so much someone who breaks the law as someone who goes against the odds.

One of the things I love about theater, one of the reasons I’ll never give it up, is that it’s fifty percent the audience’s responsibility.

I do the work just because I enjoy it on the day, working with the guys. For me, it’s like going to play a game of baseball: you’ve got your teammates, you get to do something that’s fun, hopefully, and whatever happens with that stuff is in the cosmos someplace.

I had panic attacks during rehearsal. There were times when I really thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

I think you can find yourself on one of these shows for a long period of time and think that all you’ll ever be able to do is that character. Certainly people think of you that way.

We knew all along we were making a good show, so its success was not a surprise to me. What has surprised me is the magnitude of this show’s success. More people see me now in one episode than saw me in 20 years of movies and theater!

A smart person is not one that knows the answers, but one who knows where to find them.