Gary Dourdan

Gary Dourdan: My favorite episode of season 3 was perhaps Random Acts of Violence.

Gary Dourdan: That was my whole high-school upbringing right there. I had two or three groups of friends who were not really friends, they were all acquaintances, that I was trying to fit into to make myself feel partially normal. I always switched around, because I never quite got it right, until I started to get older, started to realize that I needed to completely be an individual.

Gary Dourdan: I want to mix mediums so that it's not about making a choice between music, film or TV. I don't want to have to make an either/or decision.

Gary Dourdan: I have to protect myself because people think that because you come into 25 million homes every week, they know you. I walk the line between being gracious and being rude.

Gary Dourdan: I was really connected to my brother. So everything I do now, be it my acting or my music, is always in honour of him.

Gary Dourdan: One thing I'm trying to do with my career and with my craft is to blur the lines between what people think African-Americans should play, and what I am doing.

Gary Dourdan: Looks are good, but the only thing constant in life is change and I just had to renew.

Gary Dourdan: I'm really into electronics anyway, so I like that they throw that element into my character every now and then. Actually, they spread out the techniques among all of our characters so we each have skill in many different areas. So, there might be one show when I'm in the A/V lab and then there's another show when I'm at the coroner's office.

Gary Dourdan: I've never liked categories; I've never liked boxes; I've always tried to be unconventional as much as I possibly could.

Gary Dourdan: I love my daughter more than air. You really start to understand what unconditional love means. You want to give your whole soul to that person's development.

Talking about his and Marg Helgenberger's character on CSI.

Gary Dourdan: There's a lot of tension between us now.

Gary Dourdan: ...Man, you need to see how many beautiful women there are in the world. It's not about age or the country they come from. It's about how confident they are. That's all...

Gary Dourdan I'm the practical joker on the set. I crack jokes all the time. If someone has a close-up I make sure I'm the one to crack them up. The directors get mad as hell but I always try to have fun. You can't go to work for five or six years in the same job and not have fun, life is too short.

Gary Dourdan: We seem to have made nerds cool again.

Gary Dourdan: Being married was something of an art to play. I had never done a romantic scene on the show before because our personal on-screen lives are normally kept in the background. The crew was all stuffed into the room watching the filming to see what I was going to do, because I'm usually seen as the tough guy in the show and they've never seen me being romantic. I had to step to it and play it.

Gary Dourdan: I learn everything I learn now on the [set of CSI]. It's on-the-job training. They teach me and I go, 'Really? Is that what that's for?' But it's fantastic because I get to learn every day at work. They teach me 5-syllable Latin words and I'm able to retain 'em. My short-term memory is great!

Gary Dourdan: I have teachers come up to me and say, 'We showed your show in our schools because it helps us teach.' And I like that because a lot of teachers are not getting paid a lot of money, and they come to school disgruntled, and they want to put a little bit of life into their work, so they use our show as an example. So on a couple of levels, I'm really proud about being on this particular show (CSI)."

Gary Dourdan: I do get weird fan mail generally. Weird people like me, but that's okay, cause I like weird people.

Gary Dourdan: I do have lots of kids come up to me, going "I want to be a forensic scientist." Are you sure, kid? It's carving off the top of heads and sh*t. It's rough, there are these guys who've been in law enforcement 27 years, I don't know how they do it, they see a lot of hard stuff.

Gary Dourdan: In the early days George (Eads) and I used to hang out a bunch, but then he got a girlfriend. You know what happens. We were really lucky because there are usually one or two divas on the set and we didn't really have them, or at least it was kept to a minimum, so it's not really abrasive. Everyone gets on really well and we have good chemistry.

Gary Dourdan: I'm learning something new everyday; I don't know half this shit! I read the script and I'm like, 'what is that?' But you need to learn.

Gary Dourdan: (About co-star Jorja Fox) She's got this Lauren Bacall thing going on with that raspy voice.

Gary Dourdan: Well, I look to the boundless energy of those people who brought me up. I want to continue to work in every aspect to elevate the craft to the highest level and leave a legacy for the younger cats that is not held by boundaries.