When something bad is written about me, I find it hurtful. So I choose not to look at it.

I don't deal with the whole 'bad boy who doesn't call you.' That doesn't interest me at all, and I just look the other way.

I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking. I look sort of violent. I'm the odd one out, the outsider.

I have Slavic fat pads that make me look like a chipmunk and arched predatory eyebrows. With that, you're not going to get funny. That's why I play so many bad guys.

Occasionally if I look back at something I've written I'll find one of those that I don't understand, but that's a bad thing - the unconscious has dealt me a bad hand.

I haven't talked to the press much. That's why I've gotten kind of a bad reputation. They look at me and think I don't give a damn. But I'm not comfortable with the attention.

I want the next 16-year-old kid who looks like me to know he's not automatically the bad guy. Hopefully, that kid can look at Mustafa Ali and say, 'Hey, he's not the bad guy, and I don't have to be, either.'

All the old school Young Adult novels inspired me. I grew up reading R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Richie Cusick, and so on. I loved how you never really knew who the 'bad guys' were in their works, and I wanted to capture that feeling with 'Don't Look Back.'

It's not the norm, I guess, to see someone as aggressive as me being more or less very athletic. You see me running, having a big, violent hit, it's going to look bad, but that's the natural ability I've been given. Why would I let it run to the wayside and not use it?

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