I am actor Spencer Garrett, you might know me from Mad Men, House of Cards, a voice on Legend of Korra, Masters of Sex, Air Force One, Public Enemies, Michael Mann's Luck, and currently on USA's Satisfaction. AMA!

Does korra ever get back into republic city lawfully?

I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Anyone ever say you look like Beau Bridges?

I get it all the time. And - you ready for a funny story? So Beau Bridges - I've heard that for the last 20 years, that i look like a younger, slender-er Beau and I've always taken it as a compliment because I'm a huge fan of his, and his brothers. And this past year I was lucky enough to work with him on Masters of Sex. And i went up to him, and I introduced myself, and he looked at me, and he said "Has anyone ever told you that we look alike? I feel like I'm looking in a mirror" and then he proceeded to tell me a story about when he was a young boy, he was at my parent's wedding, both Beau & Jeff, and their father Lloyd, and Lloyd's wife, were at the wedding of my mom & dad.

Beau, at some point during the wedding, bumped into my mom when she was leaning down, and gave her a bloody nose. At the wedding reception. And Beau was telling me this story, while we we were on the set of Masters of Sex. He said "Your mom bent down, and somehow I ended up bopping her on the nose, giving her a bloody nose, and my dad was mortified. Of course I was just a kid and it was an accident," and then Beau said "Would we mind if we called your mother? I'd like to apologize." So I got on my cell phone, we called my mom, she picked up, I said "Mom I have someone here who'd like to talk to you," and then Beau said "Hey Kathleen, it's Beau Bridges" and i Heard this funny laugh, my mother's funny laugh on the other end of the phone, and Beau said "I just wanted to apologize for giving you a bloody nose 50 years ago." And she said "All is forgiven, my dear, take care of my son."

Isn't that sweet?

Do you think that netflix oriented shows available for stream can take over regular television shows?

Would you vote for Frank Underwood for president?

If you could bend one element (earth fire water or air) what would it be and why?

What was your big break that got you started acting?

How do you feel about Nick pulling Legend of Korra from TV in season 3?

I don't think it's going to "take over" but I do think there is a new golden age of television. I think it started with The Sopranos, it kind of started there, and it's continued up with Breaking Bad, and Boardwalk Empire, and Mad Men, and certainly House of Cards & shows like OITNB - shows like that have proven that the kinds of platforms are limitless. I flew back across the country yesterday and saw people watching movies on their phones, their tablets, laptops - there's no limit to the possibilities of where streaming is going to go and what kinds of productions can come out of it. I mean, you see the production values of a HOUSE OF CARDS which has, twice in a row, been nominated for an Emmy for best television show and it's not even television! So that's really broken the mold, and you have shows like BOSCH coming out... So I think it gives writers and creatives a chance to really expand the horizons of what is possible.

Hahaha! Knowing what i know about Frank Underwood, and especially knowing what i know about what's coming up in Season 3, I'm going to plead the Fifth.

Wow - well I started acting in college, and it continued into, I worked in the theater in Washington DC and the NYC. I came out to Los Angeles in 1990, and I was just gigging, I didn't get too many breaks. I was happy to be getting work and fortunate enough to be doing work and projects that I really admired and working with people that i really respected. I've been very lucky. I've gotten to work with really amazing people - actors, directors, writers - you don't always get to choose, but I've been lucky. If I had a break, I would say it was probably was Reasonable Doubts, because I did a guest spot and then 6 months later they brought me back to do another one and then I became a regular - that was my first real job consistently going from show to show on a series, and that kind of put me on the map. And it was real on the job training for me.

I would say probably water as the element.

And I'm not crazy about it.

Speaking of TV gigs, I was also a fan of the woefully short lived "The Good Guys". ("I'm no rat!") How was working in Dallas with Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks?

Fantastic. That was another great experience with Jonathan Frakes, who directed me on Star Trek. He called me up out of the blue and said "Do you want to play an Irish mobster?" And I jumped at the chance, because Bradley is an old friend, and I was a fan of Colin, whom I'd met while working on Charlie Wilson's War with his dad, Tom Hanks. That was one of the most fun experiences I've had working as a guest actor on a show in a long time, one because Brad Whitford is always a good time, and is always fun to be around on a set - we worked together on The West Wing - and Jonathan Frakes makes it a party and a pleasure to come to work every day, so that was a good one, because it made working in the heat of Dallas a little bit more enjoyable. I miss that show. I liked it a lot. Wish it had stuck around.

Oddly enough, the executive producer of that show is a guy named Matt Nix, and he created BURN NOTICE as well. And when I got the job on the Good Guys, Matt reminded me that about 15 years earlier, he was an assistant at the agency that I was with, at the time, he was a secretary, and I always made it a point of being very kind to the assistants at the time, because today's assistant might be tomorrow's studio head or executive producer, and so when I got to the set, and Matt always used to wear suspenders and a tie to work. That was his thing. So when I got to set, to my trailer, there was a pair of suspenders & a tie in a box from Matt Nix with a little note saying "Welcome home."

What did you have the most fun working on? Do you have a favorite moment on the set of House of Cards?

Well, yeah. Kevin Spacey is an old friend, we go back to 1985, I met Kevin when he was doing a play at the Kennedy Center with my mother. It was a production of Chekhov's The Seagull, with Kelly McGillis, who was about to open in TOP GUN, and Kevin and I have been friends since then, and have worked together many times since on 21, and a few years ago I played Tom DeLay to his Jack Abramoff in a wonderful movie called Casino Jack. And so getting to swing with him on a set is a blast, he's just so much fun to act with and we crack each other up.

do character actors ever get together and gossip?

Oh, actors love to gossip. I don't know that there's a character actor's club for gossiping, but if there is, I'd love to find it. I would probably be elected president. I mean, actors in general are gossips. Sometimes we have too much time on our hands, sitting around onset or in trailers, but I don't think it's specific to character actors. I think leading men & women also love to gossip as well. Character actors are just more interesting, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks for doing this! I see from IMDB that both your parents were in the entertainment industry. How much choice do you feel like you had in going in to your career? Was there a lot of pressure from your parents to be an actor? Or did they encourage you not to?

None at all. My mom started acting when she was 2 years old, and is still acting. My dad was a talent agent for about 50 years, and my mother's response when I said "Mom, I think I want to do this and go into the family business" - she said "Okay, but you better be a good one." No pressure, right?!

But they certainly didn't encourage me, or discourage me. It was my choice, and there's certainly other things I could have chosen to do, but they were nothing but supportive. Thank goodness. Both my parents were wonderfully supportive, and continue to be to this day. They are very proud of me, and I love them for that.

What was your biggest regret in your career?

My biggest regret: I don't have any. You can't look back, you can only look forward. Or as Edith Piaf famously sang, "je ne regrette rien." Regrets are for suckers.

Besides the entire cast of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, name one contemporary you look up to?

Lawrence Fishburne.

Did you enjoy your experience as a voice actor more or less than a character actor?

I enjoy it equally because it's a different outlet for acting. I got to do Legend of Korra this year, I got to play a wonderful character in a Star Wars video where I actually got to say "May the Force be with you" which gave me chills down my spine when I said it... being a voice actor can be every bit as challenging as acting on film, because you have to create a reality in this little vacuum of a recording booth and you have to sell the reality of the character that you're playing whether it's a cartoon character, someone fictional, or even if you're selling soap, it's every bit as much of a challenge and I welcome it.

Hey, how much do you hate Raiko's guts right now?

I'm sympathetic to Raiko. I'm sympathetic to President Raiko. I don't hate his guts, because I love playing him. You have to love all of the characters you play, even if they are evil.

Out of everyone you've worked with who was the most different to how you expected them to be?

Ah. I would say Robert Duvall. I got to work with on a movie called The Stars Fell on Henrietta, which was one of my first films when I was first starting out, and he was one of my acting heroes. And I just had such reverence for him, and how he practices his craft, and I thought he would be sort of remote and distant to a young 24 year old actor, but he embraced me and kind of took me under his wing, and showed me the ropes - I was very green and kind of nervous, and he was absolutely wonderful to me, and I will never forget that.

Hey Spencer Garrett! Thank you for giving us this opportunity

• What was it like working with the cast and crew from Supernatural?

• Do you have any off camera memories from filming Air Force One?

• Nicolas Cage, yay or nay?

Thank you again for giving us this chance, on behalf of this AMA I'd like to commend you on your talents and wish you luck on your current and future projects

oh, I LOVE those guys, they're terrific. It was a great reunion for me with the executive producer from that show, Robert Singer, who gave me my first break in television on a show called Reasonable Doubts with Mark Harmon and Marlee Matlin, back in 1992 I think it was. That was my first lead role on a television show, not a guest star, I actually did a guest spot on that show & they made me a regular. And it sort of turned out to be one of the favorite characters on the show, and I had a blast with Jared and Jensen, they are real pros and true gentlemen.

I have a great on-camera memory! I remember meeting Glenn Close for the first time, and we literally met each other, we said hello, and the very first thing we had to do was I had to run across the White House lawn just as her helicopter was landing on the lawn, take her out of the helicopter, then run through the wind from the helicopter back across the lawn to the White House. And we did it about 10 times, because I had to arrive on the spot where the helicopter hit the ground at EXACTLY the right moment, otherwise they wouldn't get the shot. And I managed to hit it just about every single time, and Glenn said "Wow, you're really good at this kid." And I've had a crush on her ever since.

Oh absolutely Yay! His contributions to American Cinema have been substantial. There's no one like him. His performances sometimes can be said to be 'over the top' but there has never been anyone like him. I think he's a wonderful actor.

Hey there, Mr. G. Was a big fan of Star Trek TNG and I thought "The Drumhead" was one of the best eps of that series (even though we never find out what happened to your character). Anything you can say about working on that?

That was maybe my second or third job! And for a couple of reasons I was nervous - one, because I had not been a student of the show or familiar with the lore of the show or how popular it was. The original one or TNG. And I was really coming in completely blind. And I was playing a Romulan, and I had no idea how a Romulan was supposed to act. So I went back and I looked at past episodes, my godfather (who's an actor named Liam Sullivan) was on one of the original episodes of Star Trek called Plato's Stepchildren, and I called Liam from the set and he was the one who told me what a Romulan was and how a Romulan should act. Of course I got lots of information from Jonathan Frakes, the director, with whom I've had a long association since that show - he's directed me since in several shows since The Next Generation - but I do remember being a little nervous because I was sitting there across from Patrick Stewart whom I had watched do Shakespeare over the years, and I was in the presence of a true artist. And he made me feel, once again, like Duvall, very at ease - I was maybe 24, 25, fresh out of drama school trying to act like a Romulan, I had little rubber ears glued to my head in a blue polyester suit, not really in my element, and Patrick Stewart said to me "My dear boy, it's all part of the fun. Have a good time."

And I got to see him recently in May at the White House Correspondents dinner in Washington DC this past may - I was right behind him on the red carpet at an event! I went up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around and said "Simon Tarses, you've arrived!"

(That was my character's name)

He remembered from all those years ago, and it was like I was looking at Captain Picard, and I sort of took that in a couple of different ways - it was a long journey from being a nervous little kid on the set of Star Trek to being a guest at the White House Correspondents Dinner, a long strange trip but well worth it.

Well, maybe the nervousness helped, since Tarses had a secret, as we know.

I always knew Patrick Stewart was a classy guy, so it's nice to know he'd remember years later.

That was such a lovely surprise, to have him turn around and say that! For those 2 weeks on that set, he became sort of a mentor to me. I felt like I was in very good hands with all of them, and I'm happy to say that LeVar Burton whom I've been directed by since, and Jonathan Frakes, and all of those guys from that set I have a nice friendship with to this day. What a nice thing to have come out of a little guest spot I did 25 years ago.

Have you ever had an interest in directing at all?

I do, and I have! I've directed several plays here in Los Angeles, and I hope to do more. And I'd love to get into directing television or features someday. I produced my first movie 3 years ago, a film called Below the Beltway, which we made in Washington DC for $215,000 in 17 days. I called up about 15 really good friends of mine - Tate Donovan, Noah Wyle, Charlotte Salt, Kip Pardue, Sarah Clarke - I got a great cast together, and it ended up doing really well. So I now have the bug for producing, and I would love to do another directing job.

Was there ever a role you really wanted and didn't get?

Yes. A couple. But I have to think that it was for a reason. I always want the actor that got the job that i wanted to be better than I would have been. When I go to the movies and I see the guy that got a gig that i wanted, I want him to be spectacular. I want to root for the guy that got the job that i wanted. But like I said, I don't want to look back or have regrets. Sure, there are a few roles that I went after that i would have loved to have gotten, but this is a business of rejection & disappointment sometimes, and you have to roll with the punches - I don't want to live in a world of "coulda woulda shoulda." It's hard enough getting work & sustaining a career in this industry. I'm blessed & fortunate to have worked as much as I have.

What was your favorite role?

Probably is Public Enemies, which was after years of playing lots of guys in suits, lots of lawyers and judges and politicians, Michael Mann (the wonderful director) took a chance on me and cast me as a gangster in the 1930's. And I got to do something completely different, something I had never been given a chance to do before. So that was a really special moment and a real turning point in my career, because casting directors saw me as being able to do something beyond what I'd been making my bread & butter at for so long, and said "you're a character actor, you need to play characters" - so I got to break out of the lawyer / judge / politician box. It was a wonderful role & a great filmmaking experience. I've been fortunate enough to work with Michael twice since then, on Luck and then last year i spent 3 months in Asia, in Kuala Lampur, Shanghai, and Jakarta, shooting alongside Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis and a wonderful Asian actor called Lee-Hom Wang, who's the Brad Pitt and Justin Timberlake combined of Asia. He's American-born but went over to Asia and became a huge phenomenon, so he's one of the leads of Cyber as well. Cyber will be out in, I think, this coming November? It's going to be amazing, I think it will be one of his best films since The Insider.

which residual checks surprise you the most? (shawshank redemption apparently paid for a lot of character actors' retirements)

I got one last week, I don't know what it was from, for zero cents - no dollars and no cents, which is bananas! There used to be a bar in LA called "Residuals" where if you took a residual check in that was under a dollar, they gave you a free drink, and too many actors were showing up with tiny little residual checks and getting hammered, so they closed the bar down. That was probably the most surprising one. But I would say that Air Force One saw me through some lean times.

And it is kind of the gift that keeps on giving!

As an actor you've had so many different roles. What does a typical week look like for you?

On set or off set?

Both! Do you spend a week shooting then another week off? What does that balance look like?

Thanks for responding!

It really depends on the job. On Satisfaction, the show that I'm currently on, I work 1-2 days a week in Atlanta, and I come home to Los Angeles in between where I spend most of my time pursuing the next project and feeding my theater jones by going to lots of theater. That's how I keep busy during the downtime, is going to lots of theater, seeing lots of movies, seeing what's out there & keeping abreast of what's going on. But when you're working on something, like Cyber for instance, where we were traveling all over Asia, there's a lot of downtime sometimes, and so I try to take advantage of the location by exploring my surroundings and learning as much about the country I'm in as possible and visiting places I've never gotten to see before. I've been lucky enough to do 2 films in Thailand in the last 5 years, most recently last december I went to do a movie called The Coup, and they flew me from LA to Chiang Mai, Thailand to shoot a scene that takes place in a restaurant in Dallas. So I ended up staying for about 2 weeks and exploring Northern Thailand.

What's the funniest thing that's ever happened on the set of all the shows and movies you've been in?

Well about 7 years ago, I did a movie in Istanbul, Turkey, with Gary Busey (do I need to say any more?) and Billy Zane. I flew from Los Angeles to Istanbul, and I went from Istanbul to a place called Gaziantep, Turkey, about 23 hours worth of flying. I got to the airport completely jet-lagged off my face. There was a blackout at the airport, so it was completely dark, and my luggage was missing. I was informed that my luggage was in Cincinnati, so I somehow made it through the dark of this airport - and I arrived at like 3 o'clock in the morning, it's pitch black outside, I'm driving in a Turkish car with a guy who doesn't speak English, in the middle of nowhere, and they took me to a restaurant where Billy Zane and Gary Busey were sitting there smoking from a hookah pipe, and I've got nothing new to wear, and i remember thinking "This must be what Alice in Wonderland felt like when she went down the rabbit hole."

I ended up buying some clothes at a turkish Woolworth's. And somehow got through the 3 weeks of filming. My bags arrive the day before I left, just in time to avoid Gary Busey trying to bring the lord into my heart.

Hello Spencer, Thanks for the ama session

What was the best character u played? To which one r u the closest?

What was the most exciting part of ur life?

The best advice u ve ever been given and by whom?

Thanks

The best character I've played was probably in Air Force One, which I consider my first movie break. He was a young slightly naive guy in the snake pit of Washington, caught up in this crazy political drama, and that's sort of an apt parallel to how i felt as a young actor starting out. You're kind of thrown into this world you don't know much about, and it was very much like me - I mean, we tend to play ourselves a lot, but that was probably the closest to me because he was young and kind of naive, and so was I at the time.

That's a great question! I don't know! Waking up this morning.

Sandford Meisner, great acting teacher, said "Acting is the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances." And that has been the key to my work since I started in this crazy business.

Any interesting stories from the set of Yes Man?

Other than being completely kept in stitches for days by Jim Carrey, who was a complete & total pro, that was one of the most joyful experiences I've had. I was on that movie for about 2 weeks, and I remember laughing so hard I would cry sometimes. And to go to work like that and have that every day was quite a gift. And i also got to - my first day on-set, I went to the bar where Zooey Deschanel's character was singing, and I'm a huge fan of her singing, so that was a treat to see her sing live.

Hey look, it's "That Guy".

Seriously though, I've noticed you are 'uncredited' in several flims, (Iron Man 3, Captain America: The First Avenger) how does that work? Do you agree to be in the film but decide to forgo credit for your role on the film in the final roll? Are you paid a considerably less amount, so they just decide you aren't worth the 1 KB of data or 1/32 of film space to put you in the credits? Is it negotiated? Seriously, how does that system work?

Also, do you ever feel ripped off that you aren't credited for work that you do? Does being uncredited in a film hurt your reputation as an actor, or even your feelings as an individual?

On Captain America, I was actually filming a movie called Game Change for HBO about the Sarah Palin / John McCain presidential run, and I got a call from my voice agent asking me to do a narration of some newsreel footage. It was a very small part. I ran into a local Baltimore recording studio, and read off the copy, and it ended up being in the movie. I don't know why it wasn't credited, I don't take it as a slight, because I still get residuals. In Iron Man 3, however, that's a bit of a sore spot. I was left off of the credits due to a clerical error, and was a bit shocked when I went to the premier and didn't see my name on the credit roll at the end, and ended up having to ask Marvel to put my name back in and they were kind enough to re-open the master and put my name into the credits. Someone, somewhere, slipped up, but Marvel STEPPED up and put my name back in the credits. So I credit Marvel with doing the right thing. Someone was asleep on the wheel, but they took care of it.

And no, sometimes an actor will ASK to be uncredited. I've done it a couple of times. But I've only been uncredited not by my own choice a few times, but I don't think it hurts the actor.

Who would you rather fight - a horse sized chicken or 100 chicken-sized horses?

A horse-sized chicken, definitely. Hands down. I think I could take it.

I'd have a giant BBQ afterwards!

What was the most difficult role you ever had to do?

Out of everyone you worked with, who do you think was the best person, not just as an actor/actress, but as a human being?

Thank you for doing this :)

Probably, 2 years ago I worked on NCIS: Los Angeles. And I had about 3 days to learn how to do a very complicated knife-fight sequence. And Daniela Ruhe and I trained for 3 days with a sayoc Philipino knife-fight master, and it was a very intricately choreographed scene that involved a lot of physicality that i had to call upon for. That was a tough one. But I think I nailed it.

Oh there have been so many! I'm going to say Lawrence Fishburne again. I don't mean to keep going back to him, but he's like my brother, my father, my friend - he's had a profound impact on my life, my thinking and my career. We've worked together twice, but I always learn something new whenever I work with him. And the other person would be Emilio Estevez for someone who has been in this business for such a long time, but is one of the kindest, most decent human beings i've ever gotten the chance to be around. And a very talented director.

What was it like being a part of the cast of 21 Jump Street?

Oh boy! Well, that was one of my first jobs too. I was only there for a week, and all of my scenes were with a very young Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise, and I think at that point Johnny - it was towards the end of his run on that show, i think his head was already in movie-star-land, he was a little checked out of the Jump Streetland and had already moved on - but interesting to work with nonetheless. And for me I was still young and learning, and it was wonderful to show up on the first day of rehearsal for Public Enemies twenty-some years later in Chicago, and we sat across from each other at the table read, and Johnny looked at me and he said "Jump Street?" and I said "you got it."

It's nice when you make an impression. I'm working a new show called Aquarius with David Duchovny, and the same thing happened. We sat next to each other at the table read the other day, and we sat down, and he looked at me and he was like "X-files?" And I said "yea" and he said "You were my lawyer!" and i said "Yes!" So obviously I did something right.

Who is your dream character that you would want to play and why?

I would love to play - since I've played so many senators, and congressmen, and men of power in Washington - but i have yet to play the President of the United States. so I would love to play the President. I came very close in Iron Man 3, I was initially cast as the President, and then a week before we started, they thought i looked too young and ended up re-casting with an older actor, so I put on a Tennessee accent and some crazy sideburns and played a redneck southern cop instead. But I would love to play the President in something.

What was is it like working on Mad Men, especially Christina Hendricks?

She was absolutely lovely. And the added bonus was my old friend John Slattery, who plays Sterling, directed the episode - which was terrific, he's a real actor's director, so it was a real treat.

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I'm not much of a runner. I'm a climber. For physical activity, I play baseball and basketball and I climb, one of my favorite spots is Joshua Tree, in the desert. I ran in high school, and that sort of put me off, so I run as little as possible. But one of my favorite charities is the Our Time organization, which is actually based in New York, it's for kids who stutter. And I've been contributing to them for quite a long time. And also Project ALS, and I've been involved with them for a long time. And for the last 15 years, I've been a spokesperson for the national Breast Cancer Coalition, and I've done a review with them - along with Kelsey Grammar, Kristin Chenoweth, and various actors over the years - we do a cabaret show called Les Girls, and I've done that - I sing and dance the opening number for them, since 2000, and that's one of my favorite things to do, because singing in public is terrifying, so I gear up about 6 months before it starts.

What is your guilty pleasure? Be honest.

Salted caramel chocolates.

What's the most interesting thing to ever happen on set of any show you've worked on?

I would say... the most interesting thing would be working with Andrew Dice Clay on a show called HITZ back in 1995, sitting in my dressing room listening to Andrew Dice Clay recite Shakespeare beautifully. Blew my effing mind.

What would be the favorite muffin of the character you've most enjoyed playing?

It would have to be an Irish Scone. And he would probably take the scone and throw it at someone's head, and knock them out with it.