I have a very healthy growth of both head and facial hair. People always want to attribute further superhuman powers to me. It's funny the way the audience really seems to want me, Nick the actor, to exhibit the same machismo as Ron Swanson.

I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.

Jobs that require a suit upset me. They displease me much, as our world is rife with such superficial conformity.

I think what makes so many other actors miserable is focusing completely on making other plans. They're obsessed with their haircut and their headshot and their agent, their IMDB profile or whatever.

I worked a lot in Chicago's theater scene as a fight choreographer. And so I do have a lot of experience in stage combat and also in Kabuki dance and Kabuki theater.

I come from the theater, where I got into acting because I love transforming. I love nothing more than to be unrecognizable.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.