The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more.

I look at it scene-by-scene. Whether it's a historical character or not, whatever, on the page is one thing and delving into the history or somebody is one thing, but making something work for an audience in front of a camera is another exercise and you bring whatever authenticity you can to it.

A show that's been successful that been on a while, chances are it's going to stay that way. At least it's going to maintain some kind of standard. But when a show begins, there's no telling. Even after 13 shows or a whole year, you don't know what will become of it.

I don't think anyone sets out to do something bad, it's just that it's very difficult.

Part of you wants to look over at the people watching and say, "Not bad, huh? Me and Clint Eastwood." But you have to get past that and just be an actor.

Clint Eastwood is a very soft-spoken, humble guy, actually, which helped put somebody like me at ease, who had never worked with somebody as huge as that. I'm sure that's not always the case with legendary people.

To be in a movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and a movie that had a large budget... I got a taste of what really good filmmaking could be.