I didn't come to Hollywood to get on magazine covers or start my Porsche collection or to enjoy that kind of lifestyle, to go to the right parties and meet the right people.
My family put a lot of emphasis on homework, so there weren't too many comic books or video games for me, when I was growing up.
There's so much we can't express in our day-to-day interaction with people because it's considered inappropriate. And acting is all about being inappropriate.
To be honest, I find going out pretty scary and intimidating. Got all those people checking you out, with only one purpose: hooking up. I'm quite the dork, I'd rather sit home and play Scrabble. But that doesn't get you a girl, does it?
I've been spared to a large extent the business end of the race stick.
I've never read a book or attended a class on screenwriting. I'm not opposed to the idea, but I like what I've got going on naturally and want to protect that. The one question I will ask myself as I'm re-reading a script for the 60th time is, 'Am I entertained? Still?' If the answer is 'yes,' I'll assume other people will be, too.
I had a brief experience in the food industry. I was a bus boy in a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, scraping re-fried beans off people's plates. It teaches you a bit of humility and the importance of a good deodorant.
I broke my nose in gym when a ball hit me. I took a girl to her debutante ball the next week wearing a tux and a big, honking bandage. Not the romantic night she had in mind.
I worked with the same trainer that worked with Denzel Washington in THe Hurricane. It was three months of training, five days a week, 4 to 5 hours a day. This was followed by a month of choreography.
Prison Break is so far-fetched, I had to make viewers believe that Michael is capable of making the impossible possible.
I am a workaholic, have always been.
Michael Scofield is someone everyone can relate to, but nobody would want to be in his shoes.
I think it's a very dangerous game to play when you assume that just because someone's an entertainer, they're automatically a role model. Entertainers are there to entertain. They aren't there to teach your children the lessons that you haven't bothered to teach them at home yourself. They're just doing their own version of entertaining.
When I've had my periods of unemployment, I'll get these e-mails from my father: 'I've read that the LAPD has a reservist program. Perhaps that's something you'd be interested in taking a look at.'
I wanted to be involved in TV and film in some capacity, so a compromise, because acting seemed unrealistic, and so risky, was to get into the production side. And it was a really fortunate, smart move looking back on it, because it gave me perspective on another side of the business.
Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.
I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.
I think what you learn, working on a film or TV set, is how to tune certain things out. You've got 60-100 people swirling around you, each of them with a very important job to do.
Unfortunately, I'm allergic to all animals and even some people.
I surrender the idea of having some kind of control over the arc of my career a lot of the time because you never know what tomorrow's going to bring.
I have very high expectations of myself. I'm a very competitive person but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be and if that means that I'm eventually better than everyone else then so be it.
I'm kind of a dork. I don't have much game. I'm not particularly comfortable in bars or clubs. I much prefer being home playing Scrabble, having dinner with a couple friends, going to see a movie, or losing a whole weekend to Season 14 of Law and Order or The Simpsons.
Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.
My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion.