It doesn't matter if you're good. If you're just good, you won't succeed. If you have patience and persistence and talent and that's it, you will not have a successful career as an actor. The elusive thing you need is luck.

I enjoy storytelling. I like to write it, I like to direct it, I like to act in it, I like to produce it. I like to be around storytellers. That's what excites me.

I think the best-written films or television series have a measure of the opposite of what they are.

To me, character in a person is judged by the decisions that are made under pressure.

I didn't feel entitled to become a star. I didn't expect it.

The hardest work that actors have done, including myself, is on poorly written scripts. And when you first start out you do anything. I did a lot of crap. I did more crap than I can tell you. But you did it because you needed the money. You have to pay for your pictures and resumes, and classes and insurance and food like everybody else. In those days if it was crap you just didn't put it on your resume.

It's a familiar story now: a meek and depressed high school chemistry teacher with terminal cancer cooks up a scheme to make and market a superior grade of methamphetamine to provide a nest egg for his family after he's gone. But over the course of five seasons Walter White goes from milquetoast to murderous in order to survive.