My passion is acting, and has always been. It's what brought me to this point of being able to diversify and do other things, and I hope it's something I'll continue to have a passion for.

I would say auditioning was my real training ground. The technical aspects - like hitting marks and pacing yourself and preparing and dealing with the downtime - the first recurring role I had on 24 was probably the way I learned that stuff.

I remember [Patrick J. Adams] being in a particularly disillusioned place and really wanting your ambitions to be met with opportunity and not feeling like they were. It's all the more reason that I feel grateful to be able to stay connected and be in each other's lives. Obviously now you're in a very different place, and it's really nice to be able to look back on that and be reminded of how far we've come, at least in the opportunity aspect. The mental state aspect of it is a different story, I'm sure, but I always knew you would work.

Honestly, people told me to. It was weird, I graduated from school, I never thought I'd live in L.A. and I always wanted to be to New York. I assumed that would be my trajectory - that romantic ideal of moving there and doing plays Off-Broadway and being scrappy about it. Then we did a showcase in New York and a showcase in L.A., and for whatever reason the response that I generated in L.A. was significantly more enthusiastic.

There was no other concern; there was no other focus [in the Governor's School]. It was simply there to learn and grow and perform, and that was pretty amazing and informative. I'd say that was a big pivotal moment for me.

I remember Zachary Quinto were just about to go and do So Notorious on VH1, and I was super unemployed, and I think we spent a lot of time talking about how we weren't particularly happy.

Again, as a gay man I look at that and say there's a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say 'Why? Where's this disparity coming from, and why can't we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?' We're terrified of facing ourselves.