Actor

Sophocles was a general: a warrior writing plays about military situations.

Working on 'Girls' opened up a lot of opportunity for me. It's like a dream job. It's a dream.

I was born in California. When I was six, we moved to a small town in northern Indiana called Mishawaka.

I studied Morse code.

When you get out of the Marine Corps, you feel like you can do anything.

I mean, I did plays in high school, but I was convinced you couldn't make a living doing it.

I don't feel like I have to dress up to go to the deli.

'Girls' feels very active and stirring a conversation and controversial, and you can't really ask for more as an actor.

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 have this really big face.

There's something really exciting about playing someone where you're given license to be unpredictable.

There's a kind of immediacy that comes with being constantly connected that I don't really relate to in my generation.

I have a control problem. I hate the feeling of not being in control.

I think it's good to live an artful life.

Just being in the military, you're so violent. We got into fights about just random things all the time. I don't think as aggressively as I did when I was in the Marine Corps.

I saw the pilot for 'Girls' about six months before it aired.

There's so much emphasis on Daniel Day-Lewis and his process, which is appropriately his own. But I was just blown away by his generosity as an actor. He's so giving as an actor that he just naturally commands the focus on set.

With 'Girls'... I feel like there's an impulse to try to make it look better or neater or more perfect, and when I watch theater, television, movies, it's always the imperfection I'm always more attracted to.

Obviously, 'Lincoln' is not about the telegraph operator. There's a whole other movie before and after the two isolated scenes that I'm in.

I wish I could pull shorts off. My wife tells me that I just can't. But that's okay. I'm tall, I can do other things, like change light bulbs.