I listen to music cinematically. I think about music and how it would make me feel when it's put to an image, a moving image, and I love it.

I'm drawn to villains that are three-dimensional and raw and that I can kind of see in my own life.

I have a bit of a bucolic kind of upbringing, and so I certainly bring an amalgamation of different people that I've met over the course of my life, especially before moving to Los Angeles, so I guess my childhood was my homework in a lot of ways for Harlan County.

As an actor, you're afforded these experiences that are once-in-a-lifetime for so many people. More often than not, you can't tell the seasons based on the changing of the leaves, but on the experiences you've had.

Whenever you show up on a set where you haven't been from the beginning - at least myself - I'm kind of quiet. I just watch the politics and how everything unfolds.

Unfortunately, when you're the king of the hill, there's really only one way to go, and that's down.

An actor that tells you that they have real choices between material is, for the most part, lying. There are very few people that have opportunities. But what you do have where I am in my career, is saying no to the things that seem repetitious. For me, I always look for material that allows me to bring my worldview to it. And those opportunities, since the beginning of The Shield, have grown exponentially.