I did come to L.A. to try to get on TV and get in front of a camera, so I could have a stage career in New York.

I think so many great artists are flocking to LA because the downtown art scene is so vibrant, there is cheap living and you can really flourish as an artist there. There is an unbelievably supportive and really smart, talented theatre audience in LA full of young, hungry, vibrant people. It's something that sort of makes me think of what New York must have been like in its downtown theater scene in the 1980s - before my time.

We all come from different levels, and I think every human has their own relationship to violence, athletic violence and fighting.

I think it helps, as an actor, to never know when you're going to get that next script and you're done.

I mean, I hate when actors talk about how hard their job is. It's ridiculous, because we have the best job in the world.

I think that for a lot of actors - especially American actors - to get line readings and to be told and have your director literally act out the part for you is sort of discouraging in a way. It's a very Eastern European thing to do - a lot of directors that I worked with in Russia did that as well. And, I never took that as an insult, as many actors tend to do. To me, I think it's just offering a certain energy - offering their flavor - and, instead of trying to sort of decode and communicate it to you, they just show you their flavor of what it should be.

I come from athletics and I have a pretty big boxing background, so I never really shy away or get nervous about the physical rigors of filmmaking.