There were a million different things I could have chosen or wanted to do, but the path of an artist was the one that pulled me the most. I did local theater and plays in school. I think there was a sense of entertaining - being on the stage, making people laugh, making people cry - that I was drawn to. It was also one of those things like, "I can do this for a very long time."

I try to find something in everyone that I play - even the most heinous ones. You have to find something that is real and vulnerable about everything that you play.

My sisters and mom raised me to respect women and open doors for them.

I think there's an initial shedding of the skin of a character when you've played them for so long, almost like a snake losing its skin. But when a job is done, I kind of walk away from it because I know that I need to prep for whatever else I'm going onto - I need to get back to being myself, which... Who knows exactly who that is, with all the talking voices in my head. You know, back to being a bit of a blank slate again. It becomes a necessity as an actor - at least for the way that I act.

It's a great place to be at 36 because you're an adult and you're responsible for how you impact other people, the direction of your own life [too], but you're also young enough to say, "You know what? I'm not sure of where I'm at, and I'm going to change that course and do something different. I'm going to look at life differently." I think that's the magic of that age.

I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.

I don't like to have to depend on someone else to reset the props. It's like, "No, you've gotta take responsibility for it." I know how things fit and feel. To reset that stuff myself, it's easy. The prop guys are hilarious because I'll have one set of gloves and I'll keep reusing them to get the most out of it. They're like, "We've got boxes of these."