I realise few people get to live the life they always wanted, but I'm so neurotic, I don't really think about it. I'm too busy thinking, 'I hope I don't screw up my next scene.

They say that theater is the actor's medium, television is the writer's medium and film is the director's medium, and it's really true.

Being at the mercy of the acting profession, in the early days of one's career, is really brutal and feels like you have no control over your life, at all.

I was playing pretty boys and these angelic roles like Nicholas Nickleby and all that stuff. And I was like, 'What am I doing? This isn't who I am, as a man or an artist.' I had to overcome people's belief that I was too pretty to be a badass.

No, I do a bunch of things to entertain myself. I paint, I make music, I take photographs.

Right before I got 'Sons of Anarchy,' I actually quit acting for 18 months and didnt read a single script, and I wrote a film. I felt like I needed to do something that I had control over, as an artist, and also just do something where I felt like I had some control over my life, as just a human, out in the world.

If I'd seen a grown man beating a crippled boy, of course I'd intervene. If my father died and left my mother destitute, it's your instinct to take care of her. So when I started to think about it in those terms, it started to make sense to me