When you don't have much money, you get creative. There's so much money that gets wasted on big movie sets. But when you don't have much money, you improvise.

I go to gyms quite a bit, martial arts gyms, MMA gyms. I try to train with the best people, with who's who in the martial arts, just to keep myself sharp.

In my early childhood, I was a performer by nature. I used to do puppet shows as a kid and entertain kids in classes and the teachers would make it a point that I was the entertainer of the class, but only after high school and in college that I started doing theater and acting classes, because I thought it would be fun.

The first movie I ever saw was a blaxploitation movie. It was called 'Monkey Hustle.' Like I said, just listen to the name. That's a blaxploitation movie. It had these incredible, bigger-than-life images of people who looked like I did. Or who looked like I wanted to look like.

Most people say I look mean, and because I play so many tough roles and because of my size and my martial arts background, they think I am, but I'm really not.

I'm a big fan of Steven Seagal early films. On Deadly Ground, I'll watch that anytime it comes on. That's one of the reasons I wanted to work with him. I remember that he's got a great eye for photography. There was a lot that I learned from that.

To me, the responsibility of an actor is to recreate humanity honestly. I never feel like an actor, I always look at it from a blue collar perspective.