Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, 'Oh, they're crazy,' to belittle the problem.
I studied religions and all kinds of other things in college. I took a Shakespearean villain course for English literature. It was really intense. I think that sort of rounds a person. In this business, it's really important for us to be interesting... and have interests.
It was a natural progression for me to find that if acting was what made me most comfortable, the best thing for me to progress toward was television and film.
If I wasn't making a movie, I was trying to master a new musical instrument or trying to teach myself how to shave with a straight razor. I had to find the weirdest things just to increase my understanding of other cultures or other arts or intellectual pursuits.
I've just always sort of been mesmerized by our minds and how people think and how people react differently.
Sometimes you hate villains, but you love that you hate them, and it finds this happy medium where you enjoy the process of loathing them so much that you want them to be there. It's such a weird, twisted thing that our minds do.