I think that's something that always enticed me about the '40s - back then, the glamour and the style - you couldn't really make it up. You just were or you weren't. You either fit in that world or you fit in the other. Things were very cut and dry. Things were simple. There wasn't a whole lot of excess or flash to be flashy; it was real flash, and real excitement.
Think about the physical act of pulling a trigger. The amount of pressure it takes to pull a trigger or the speed it takes to shove a sharp object into somebody. The psychology behind it. Why people kill? Why people don't kill?
You have to have sympathy for the villain. Even the most disgusting ones, you have to find something to connect with. I try to put as much of myself in every single character that I play.
Every job built my career in some way or made me grow as a person or I got to meet someone great. I had one line on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but I met Will Smith and he took 20 minutes out of his day to talk to the kid with one line. To this day, I think that guy is amazing because of that.
For me, what grabs my attention about the project is usually the character immediately and then the story, and then the people that are involved.
It's an all-inclusive package, when you get to be creative and run a little country while you're on a set and doing it with people that you enjoy working with and you all have a say in it.
I try to find something in everyone that I play - even the most heinous ones. You have to find something that is real and vulnerable about everything that you play.
People forget that actors are actors, who are looking to put on the clothes and the character, and then shed it just as easily.
My sisters and mom raised me to respect women and open doors for them.
You've got this world, these pathologists that are, day in and day out, taking apart bodies, coming up with theories about how they died and how to better serve the community. At the same time these people have lives outside and families and my character in particular, he has a fiance and things are going well for him, so you've got to show that nice warm compassionate side at the same time you've got to show the steely, icy cool of a doctor. Not only that, but a doctor who gets a bit of a God complex and starts killing people for sport.
Every single job I do. It sounds goofy but I did a music video for Fergie. I was in full on tattoos, ponytail, but it's like even things like that they help other people to see you in a different light. They give me opportunities. I try and change the image with every job that I can, it's just hard when you work on a TV show and you work so many months and trying to get away from that.
I saw so many kids 22, 19, with holes the size of a dime and they're dead. It's a gunshot and of course those kids thought they were as tough as nails, they never expected to be dead but they're gone. It's kinda nice to walk out of the County Coroner's Office with a couple of sayings, you know? "You're not so tough being dead on a morgue table."
