Actor

Something I learned in the Marine Corps that I've applied to acting is, one, taking direction, and then working with a group of people to accomplish a mission and knowing your role within that team.

I actually run a non-profit where one of the main objectives is to branch out and get a new audience for the theater. Just because the writing is so good and nothing is more effective than seeing something live and happening right in front of your face, so I definitely want to continue to pursue that.

Just having the internet is a weird and dangerous thing because people become accustomed to knowing things when they want to know them and not having to work for it. I definitely see the value in not knowing everything and having mystery in life and mystery in people.

You have friends, and they die. You have a disease, someone you care about has a disease, Wall Street people are scamming everyone, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. That's what we're surrounded by all the time.

For me, becoming a man had a lot to do with learning communication, and I learned about that by acting.

Acting is a business and a political act and a craft, but I also feel like it's a service - specifically, for a military audience.

My only close-to-game-plan is to follow good writing. If the writing is in TV or if it's in theater or in film, that's it. It doesn't really matter what the medium is.

I was an infantry Marine, and there are only so many things you can do when you get out of the military that you can apply your job to. Either a janitor or a cop. I tried to do both of those things because what else are you going to do?

If I'm not doing something or working on something, I literally just sit in the room and think, which I don't think is productive. I won't go outside for days.

I've seen incredible acts of humanity in the military because people put themselves aside, and it's about the other person.

The most you play a character in the theater is, like, a couple months, and then you put it away.

You always read stories of people going out to California and making it as an actor with, like, two dollars, so I figured I'd try it.

I'm conflicted with theater in the city because you want to reach a diverse audience, and that audience doesn't typically go to the theater.

The first job I got was this TV job in this show called 'The Unusuals.' Then I did a play called 'Slipping,' and at the same time I was rehearsing another play at Playwrights Horizons, and that kind of snowballed into a bunch of plays.

It's hard to kill that father-son bond.

I don't consider myself a celebrity. That would be kind of sad.

How do you take what you do as seriously as possible but not so seriously that it ends up inhibiting what you do?

I was having an argument with my stepfather, and he was like, 'Why don't you join the Marine Corps?' And I was like, 'Noooo! Well, maybe, actually... ' I went and saw the recruiter, who was like, 'Are you on the run from the cops? Because we've never had someone want to leave so fast.'

People always are desperate to have others acknowledge that they are different.

I originally passed on 'Girls' because I thought TV was evil.