Interview with Stephen Root
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Stephen Root
Character actor born in Sarasota, Florida. Known as Milton in Office Space, Jimmy James in NewsRadio, Bill Dauterive in King of the Hill and Monroe Fuches in Barry.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Foundation on YouTube
These answers are taken from Stephen Root Career Retrospective | Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation on SAG-AFTRA Foundation's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with acting?
I had no ambitions for doing this at all. As you could tell, I came from a construction family. I worked construction during the summers to make money to go to the University of Florida. For the first two years of that I was in journalism, and I loved it. I loved taking pictures. I took pictures all through that time.
Then my junior year, I took an elective for student directors, and it was like, I get some credits. I walked in and they go, "Okay, you're going to be John from blah blah blah, and this is going to be Alice," and go. I did a couple of those and I had the best time ever, and I said, I think I want to do this. And I switched from journalism three months later.
I was very supported by my parents, which was amazing. My mom was a big reader. She would read to us all the time. She went to Pratt, to art school there. So I think that part of the family is where I got that from.
What do you enjoy most about acting?
You're a lot freer in a recording booth, because I think really, if I think about it, animation has kind of taken over theater for me. In theater you would do lots of roles that you would never do, because you could put on a wig and you can put on a beard and you are 70. In animation it's mostly larger than life characters. So it's very freeing to go in a booth and just go play a crazy guy on Adventure Time. It's fun.
I am so drawn to ensembles. That's why I did Marjorie Prime, because it was a four-character play. It was a new play, and that really drew me to it. I like being in an ensemble, whether it's a play or a movie or whatever.
What was a great moment for you as an actor?
I worked with the Coen brothers. I think the reason I got that job was because I scared them. We were at a table. I was right here doing my thing, and they said, "Hi, how are you?" I'm good. "Do you know what you want to do?" Yeah, I think so. "Okay. All right. Go ahead." And they lean forward a little bit. You lean forward a little bit. And I think that got me the job. They loved it. But they literally went back like that. It was great.
They're very storyboarded. They know exactly what they want from the very beginning. They'll show you the storyboards. And they're particularly famous to cast really good people and not necessarily famous ones. They would let somebody like me, a regular journeyman actor, come in and do something fun.
How did your acting career unfold?
I got two jobs, actually. There's a thing in all the southern states called the SETC, the Southeastern Theater Conference tryouts. From that SETC audition, I got a role as a soldier farmer in The Lost Colony, an outdoor drama in North Carolina. And I got the bus and truck of the National Shakespeare Company, which was a 12-person company. We rode around the country for nine months out of the year doing three shows.
The first thing that really broke me off Broadway was an R.C. Sherriff play called Journey's End. I really got my Equity card on that play. The week we opened was the transit strike, so we lasted maybe two weeks. But that led to me doing more theater on the East Coast. In Atlanta we did a show called So Long on Lonely Street, and that went to Boston and then to Broadway, and that was my first Broadway. That led to doing All My Sons with Richard Kiley on Broadway, which was amazing.
When you're in New York you do commercials and you do whatever comes up. Monkey Shines I did first, and then Crocodile Dundee, and then right after that Black Rain, and then Ghost after that. So I thought, "Oh, I'm on my way." And then I didn't get another movie for a long time.
What advice do you have for new actors?
Do everything that you can as a young actor, because work begets work. If you can do some little thing for somebody that you don't think is worth doing, there's going to be somebody else later who goes, this guy was good, I like him for something else. So I just tell a lot of young actors, do everything that you possibly can. A lot of it's going to be badly written, and you're going to have to make gold out of straw. I had to do that a lot. But it only helped me, I think, as an actor, to make a not wonderful script maybe a little better, a little more interesting, by doing something with it.
The hardest part is to stay in the business. Everybody has to make a living. I did my bartending and waiting tables in New York. But you have to stay in it. I think if you don't have to do it, then don't do it, because it's a long game. And for younger people, don't do it for being famous or wanting to get attention. It's harder than you think.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as an actor?
Office Space was not a success when it came out, by no stretch. Fox did not support it at all. The only reason the movie became successful is because this was the time of Blockbuster. People would go out and find a movie, and it's like, well, try this one. A lot of people tried that one, and it became word of mouth. People loved it and then started stopping us on the street, three years after the movie.
Swingline started making the red staplers, and pretty much on every set that I've gone to, in the AD's trailer, there's a box of staplers ready for me to sign. I didn't get a cut of it, but that's okay. I got a career out of it, so that's fine with me.
It's an honor just to be nominated. The fact that the show got recognized 19 times was hysterical. That was amazing. And that's the win for me.
Think about a demanding director, professor or cast mate. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?
One of my early things in the Shakespeare company, I think the second year, we had a brilliant, very erudite director, and we played Winter's Tale almost as a fairy tale. I come in as the young shepherd and was very vociferous. We finished the rehearsal and he came over to me and he said, "Wonderful, wonderful. 90% less." There's theater for you right there. And I learned that, and that's okay.
On Barry, we shot the pilot, and everybody from HBO to Bill said, he can't start at 11. The way they had written my character, I was always screaming. And we reshot my part of that pilot completely. Good for them for letting me still stay on and do it. And so we started at two.
I like that a director will let you give them your gut reaction to whatever this role is, instead of having directors go, you need to turn your head here and you're going to do that. You cast me because you think I can do this role. Let me show you how I would like to do it first, and then you do whatever you want.
Of all the roles you have played in the past, which is your favorite?
I was so lucky to get on Barry. Bill told me at the end of season 3 what he wanted my character to do. I said, "What? I would never get cast as that." I would never get tatted up and be in prison, that guy. And it was so fun to do. To be able to play it was a godsend.
I loved doing From the Earth to the Moon, because I was a big astronaut fan, and so was Tom.
Who is your favorite actor, and why?
I liked all the character actors from the '30s and '40s, all those guys you'd see in the same movies. They were the meat of the movie, and you kind of watched the movie for that. I loved, oh, what's his name from The Wizard of Oz? He played five roles. Frank Morgan is probably my favorite. Loved him.
I got to play Hoover to Bryan Cranston's LBJ. I was really happy to do that with Bryan, because he's one of my heroes as an actor.
I tell you who I was really amazed at, that he was such a tremendous director, was Robert Redford. I got to work with him in one film as an actor and a director and one film as a director. He was a theater actor in his brain, and he still was when he was directing The Conspirator and other stuff. So that really impressed me.
Describe your acting style.
For me it's always been comforting to know your lines backwards and forwards. It's so much easier for me in my brain to be able to play within the structure. You know the lines really well, and then within that you can go to whatever intention the director decides he wants to see. If I have a big scene with a lot of people in it, I'll record all the other people and leave a space for me. Then I'll listen to that so I can hear the cue, and say my line, and keep going.
It's the same whether you're doing a sitcom or a big movie. Be familiar, know the people that you're going to work with, and don't bump into the furniture. You really want to be a pleasant person to be able to work with, because work begets work, and you want to work with the same people again and again.
I'm not one of those guys that can get in the makeup trailer and just look at the sides and go, "Okay, I'm good." I feel like I won't be comfortable unless I've really worked on it. And if that takes a while and you get a little less sleep, that's okay.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your resume.
The way I got my SAG card was an industrial when I was living in New York. It was with Siskel and Ebert. I played Ebert eating a giant hoagie sandwich through the whole thing. Do I remember what we were shilling? I have no idea. I had the whole thing and the sandwich and it was horrible. Except I got a SAG card out of it, which is fine.
I was born in Sarasota, Florida, but I think I was the youngest baby to get on a plane and leave. I think I was three weeks old, from what my mom said, and then we moved to Palatka and then New Orleans and then just an amazing amount of places after that. I was very much a construction brat instead of an army brat. My dad built steam power plants, and they'd only take a year and a half to finish, and then they'd send us to a new place.
Stephen Root's Full Biography
Stephen Root is an American character actor known for his remarkable versatility across film, television, and voice acting. Born on November 17, 1951, in Sarasota, Florida, Root has built a prolific career spanning several decades, often stealing scenes with his dynamic performances and memorable characters.
Root gained widespread recognition for his role as the mumbling, stapler-obsessed Milton Waddams in the cult-classic comedy Office Space (1999). He also delivered a chilling performance as the blind art dealer Jim Hudson in Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed horror film Get Out (2017). Other notable film appearances include Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004), No Country for Old Men (2007), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and multiple collaborations with the Coen Brothers.
On television, Root is perhaps best known for his role as eccentric radio station owner Jimmy James on the sitcom NewsRadio (1995-1999). He has also made significant impressions in dramatic roles, including vampire Eddie Gauthier in True Blood, Gaston Means in Boardwalk Empire, Monroe Fuches in Barry, a performance that earned him critical acclaim and an Emmy nomination, and Hawthorne Abendsen, the enigmatic revolutionary in The Man in the High Castle.
In animation, Root has lent his voice to numerous beloved characters, most notably Bill Dauterive and Buck Strickland in King of the Hill, as well as various roles in Rick & Morty, Bob's Burgers, American Dad!, and Batman: The Animated Series.
A true chameleon, Root continues to be one of Hollywood's most respected and reliable character actors, admired for his ability to effortlessly shift between comedy and drama, live-action and voice roles.