As a species, we're always seeking out authenticity. We're dying for authenticity. We smell it immediately, and we also smell even the slightest riff of somebody who's not completely true to who they are. We have that ability because, as a species, we have organized around stories. We tell them and we subscribe to them.

What I've been thinking about recently is the idea of finite and fragility. Either we're acknowledging that our lives here are finite, this moment is finite, and that this whole world is fragile, or we're not, but it is really happening and that is really true.

I started a nonprofit called The Pegasus Fund, and we take top-performing students from underserved communities, and we commit to sending them for three summers to a nonacademic, holistic summer camp as a means to help them acclimate socially, geographically, spiritually to pilot secondary schools that they hope to attend.

There is a ferocity to MMA and to the training, but there's such a humanity to it too. It takes so much sacrifice and humility to get into it and to rise through those levels. If you look at the fights as a means to test who you are, every one of these fights is an opportunity to see how far you're willing to go up against yourself - and to find and define your limits.

My job, and what I've taken such joy in, is the craft of acting and of creating dynamic and authentic characters, and then finding a way to build them within the confines and with the support of the worlds that I've found myself.

I'm trying to be really synced. It goes back to the idea that, ultimately, the reward is the work.

The successes in the entertainment business are like one percent of the iceberg that you see, and the other ninety-nine percent, which is the rejection and the failure and the work and the toil and the sacrifice, is the rest of the iceberg that's below the water.