As an artist, you're always trying to reach a new height, do something new, try something you haven't done before, and push your boundaries.

I would really like to focus on directing features, and then eventually take that skill set back to television. On features, you have more control. On television, the producers are the creative forces behind it. Directors come and go on television.

Having been an actor, I always want to leave room for the actors to find their comfort zone, so I don't like to be too rigid in how I plan my shots. It's different if you have weeks to rehearse and you can rehearse on your sets or in your locations and you can plan that out with your actors, but in modern independent filmmaking, you don't really have that time. You have to have a certain level of improvisation.

I think directors can be a little insensitive to how vulnerable an actor is, when he's giving a performance. Part of the job of an actor is to invite scrutiny, but with that, the people around them have to nurture that and put them in an environment where they feel safe and they feel like they can risk something.

I believe in my own abilities and my future enough that I will not take a job that could hurt the integrity of my long-term career.

Stepping out of the director's chair completely and into a scene as an actor was weird. It was more excitement about directing than anything, but I was on a high from being a director and enjoying that process so much that going back to being an actor was almost secondary because I really was loving directing.

Directing is something that I'd been wanting and hoping to do, as I've grown into myself.