I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.

It's, like, your classic journey from a drama school. I went straight to the three-year acting degree, and I waitressed throughout that to support myself and for the first six months after I graduated. Then I started to get commercials here and there, and then I got a couple of roles in Australia and then a more regular role on a TV series.

I went on a road trip and ended up in Portland, Oregon, and from there, I did non-stop theater. I had just graduated, and I had all these ideas about what good acting was, but I hadn't put any of it into action. I spent five years honing my acting chops. And then I had this epiphany one day that I need to go to L.A.; I need to be on a sitcom.

We made 'Mickey and the Bear' with barely any money with a first-time director, a first-time director of photography, and a crew who had just graduated from NYU film school. We were all very much in this together for the first time. There's no famous actor or big explosions. It's not a Marvel movie. I thought nobody was going to see this film.

I had just graduated from Michigan State and I was working at a hospital. I was a security guard, I worked at night. Part of my job was putting bodies in the morgue and doing that kind of thing. I used to put bodies in the morgue and take them out. When I got done doing that at the hospital, in the morning I would work out before I went to sleep.

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