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.

If people are talking about my weight cut all the time and are telling me how skinny I like, you have to respect the audience. You also have to respect all of the fighters who do this.

What inspires me in life? The idea that the work and the rewards and the process is the thing.

Mother Nature is a pretty good bioterrorist.

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 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.

What's unique for me, as an actor, is this idea that I don't have to be grounded to the natural law of things. I can pull things out of the air and communicate with other spirits and other elements in other languages or forms, but I'm still right here, on the earth. That's a lot of fun.