From the time I became an actor my whole approach was to try to do as many different things as possible. It never occurred to me that I might be typecast.

Because of the way tech is changing, and becoming cheaper and user-friendly, it's becoming easier to make films cheaply, maintaining quality.

'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.

I grew up studying music. I went to conservatory.

Most of the characters I'd played were so different from me, so far from me that I had to transform.

In drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.

That's what David Caruso said to me. We were talking about the whole Emmy thing, and he said that one of the things about awards in this town is that a lot is about the drama - like the drama of the performance. And he said "Your show, The Wire, looks so real, it almost looks like a documentary. And people who aren't artists - a lot of people who vote for this stuff - don't get it."