I'm just looking for characters that continue to make me stretch and grow and learn more about the human condition.

I care about people. In the end, I think they feel it. It comes across, regardless of the character I'm portraying.

In my career, I've had people talking about different things many times, but then not get nominated.

I stay true, because whatever the project is, I'm still looking for inside of that character.

My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was really young, but I spent every summer with my grandparents, and I'd stay with my grandfather on the farm in Longview. He was retired from the railroad, and he had a small farm with some cows and some pigs. I remember part of my youth was feeding hogs and plowing fields and stuff, so that's a part of me.

We have to not just open our eyes to what's going on in other places; we need to open our eyes to what's going on right in front of us.

Filming in Africa touched something really deep inside of me, really. It changed my matrix, my insides. My blood even feels kinda different. I don't know how to describe it. It's really kind of Eucharistic. I feel like I ate the place and now it's part of my system, part of my being. I'm not claiming that now I know what it's like to be African, but that now I have a deeper understanding of myself.