I was raised with a sense of entrepreneurship - my father owned a roofing business, and I grew up with the idea that you never want someone telling you what you can and cannot do.

At Juilliard, I couldn't afford to have fun. I went to school and stayed home.

So I feel like success is opportunity plus preparation, so work begets work, and as long as you're prepared it's going to continue to come your way.

I was raised with a sense of entrepreneurship - my father owned a roofing business, and I grew up with the idea that you never want someone telling you what you can and cannot do.

Playing somebody who's real, you can bring all kind of nuances and things to him that you get from source material and things like that, but the more popular or known the person is, the more impossible it is. To get it right, that is the goal.

With all the movies I've done, I still get recognized from my episode of 'Law & Order' more than anything else. It never fails.

One thing that I've been very vocal about roles I take, and my representation has been very smart about, is that I didn't go to Juilliard to be "Thug #2" in movies. I like to be challenged. I'd say that about 40% of the roles I've done have been written for white men.