I enjoy playing characters who are struggling, particularly with themselves.

Everybody I play probably has some Italian in them.

There's an intelligence that goes with being a good cop. Intuitiveness - they have to be actors; they have to have deductive reasoning, knowledge about a great deal of subjects.

I like working with people I know and feel a kinship to.

There's a whole network of people, particularly in New York, obviously, that came up through the Spike Lee School. I'm one of them. That's big!

I have a background writing screenplays and teleplays. I've tried to write prose and fiction but never really completed anything I thought worthy of publication or worthy of anyone else to even look at.

With screenplays and teleplays, they are mapped, really, in the blueprint of a finished product, which is something you're going to watch on a screen. But a book is an end to itself, really.

I love fiction and read novels constantly.

I didn't start making a real living until eight or nine years in. Even after 'Goodfellas' came out, I was still working as a waiter, and people would recognize me - that was an odd experience. But when 'The Sopranos' hit, that was like an exponential leap.

One of my early money mistakes was getting fired from the first acting job I ever had. I was cast in a play as the lead, and I got fired three nights after the open.