Michael Weatherly Was Fed Up With the Roles He Was Being Offered Before ‘NCIS’

NCIS wasn’t Michael Weatherly’s first TV series. He had been slowly building his film resume before getting into procedurals, with a variety of unstable roles on TV. But NCIS didn’t just give him the job stability he was looking for. It gave him the opportunity to play the type of character he always wanted to play.

Tony Dinozzo was the type of character Michael Weatherly always wanted to play Michael Weatherly | Sonja Flemming/Getty Images

It took a while for Weatherly to find a character he could relate to. When he first got into acting, he cited actors like Cary Grant and Tom Hanks as direct inspirations.

“I saw every Tom Hanks movie the day they came out, and that’s how I discovered Joe Versus the Volcano. That’s what inspired me to become an actor. My girlfriend Betsy thought I was crazy to move to New York. And Betsy was definitely right,