I did my first film with Francis Ford Copploa which spoiled the hell out of me.

Just getting to talk to that person [Woody Allen ] in real life was pretty wild.

Even though I grew up in L.A., no one in my family was in the movie industry.

[The Yellow Birds] is based on a novel written by Kevin Powers, who is an Iraq War vet. I play a soldier who promises my friend's mother I'm going to keep him alive. But when we go overseas to Iraq, he gets killed. It's about what happened to him, my reckoning and dealing with that as I return home from the war.

Whenever you hear somebody else is auditioning for something, you sort of assume they're going to get it. You should try to just ignore it. I don't find it very helpful to know who else is going up for stuff, generally.

That is sort of the eternal question for people who go to Hollywood...what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and forces you to think about doing something else? When do you throw in the towel?

I feel like I would have ultimately ended up pursuing acting. It probably would have been much more difficult and taken a lot longer for me to get into it professionally.