My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me.

My whole career is just terror, from beginning to end. That's kind of my thing. A lot of happy accidents happened.

I fell in love with acting, just going to a lot of plays. My parents went to a lot of plays, and I went to a lot of schools that would get plays for kids.

I just love shows that don't hand everything to you, that ask you to be smarter. I think that's something really important that HBO has done to change the landscape of TV.

I was really a charmer; I was the guy who would get to the office, the principal would sit me down and within 10 minutes, we'd be, like, talking about some movies or something.

I like the chance to work on material. Sometimes it helps to not be going into a room cold and to know people.

Theater is a way to keep challenging myself.