I was just in a few episodes the first season [ of Empire]. They didn't kill me, but I haven't been back in season two or three. I don't know if they have plans for me or not. But I enjoyed working on it. And I think it's a really talented group of actors and, boy, very enterprising to try and shoot those every week, you know, with musical numbers and all that stuff.

I think that sometimes you don't have the opportunities for some of the most A-list-type movies, big-budget movies. But I think it's important to keep working and make the best of what's available. Because otherwise, what? Are you just going to get bitter and moan? What does my mom always say? "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

As a kid, I had a crush on Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch.

It's more like the inner workings of John Bender. He feels like he's been given a short shrift, he's not been provided the opportunities that maybe these other kids have. So he feels like he begins in a hole. And instead of trying to raise himself up, he wants to bring all of them down. That's a dynamic that's pretty universal. And so that was the real foothold on that. It wasn't like, "Oh, my high school experience is like John Bender's [in St. Elmo's Fire]."

Trace Adkins is such a great guy. Really is. And he's got that incredible voice - low, deep. He throws words around like "my dental coverage."

I think I was, like, 23 or something [on The Breakfast Club]. I was the oldest of the five. Emilio [Estevez] and Ally [Sheedy] were a year younger. The only real difference was that Molly [ Ringwald] and Michael [Hall] still had to go to school. They could shoot, like, a half day. So a lot of my close coverage was done with Molly's stand-in, so Molly could do her schoolwork.

Kim Coates is really funny. He's a blast. If you have to get beaten up and tortured, he's a good guy to get tortured by.