I sailed a bit as a child, but it wasn't until I was around 40, when I was halfway through Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander' novels, that I had the sudden epiphany that I had to go sail on a square-rig ship.

When I first came to Hollywood, I used to dream of doing films and escaping television.

If I ever get married, I'd like to pick a place so hard to reach that only a few people would turn up-like the North Pole. A destination wedding weeds out all the people who might potentially get their noses out of joint, so only the troupers would be there.

To me, the AMC brand is great storytelling - they call it slow-burn storytelling.

I can't say that I haven't done some bad acting in my time. I have. Usually that involves what we actors call indicating, when you twirl your mustache.

A great deal of my battle, as an actor, is to widdle away the things that make me self-conscious and try to trick myself into not being self-conscious.

The network wants you to make a thing that's just a stand-alone episode, so you never get any character or continuity. This is one of the ways in which television can actually be good, and even better than the movies, because it gives you a chance to tell a long story.