Art is art, and journalism is journalism.

Nothing will ever top 'The Wire.' It was historical. It was black cinema.

Don't be a victim; if you want to make movies, make movies.

It's funny, because in drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.

You either get better, or you don't progress.

Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right. If they have a preconceived notion about the role and it goes against my instinct, unless it makes sense to me, it often throws off what I'm trying to do. Though sometimes they have an insight that I don't because they've been living with the script. I don't have one feeling or another about notes, but it is always a little bit of a red alert when I get one in an audition.

A very odd thing happened to my career when I got The Wire. My career was pretty much a steady climb; I didn't really flatline much. When I did The Wire, that's when I thought all the doors would open, but that's when things flatlined. I had a really hard time just getting seen for film, which was the next step.