I had a brief experience in the food industry. I was a bus boy in a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, scraping re-fried beans off people's plates. It teaches you a bit of humility and the importance of a good deodorant.
— Wentworth Miller
When I've had my periods of unemployment, I'll get these e-mails from my father: 'I've read that the LAPD has a reservist program. Perhaps that's something you'd be interested in taking a look at.'
I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.
I am a workaholic, have always been.
I know what it takes to go from the point where someone's looking at a newspaper article, and thinking, 'Oh, this would make a great TV series,' to the point where you're actually on a set and there's a camera aimed at someone.
My first gig in the business was a guest star on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' so I'm neck deep in sci-fi. It's been a very good genre to me.
I've never read a book or attended a class on screenwriting. I'm not opposed to the idea, but I like what I've got going on naturally and want to protect that. The one question I will ask myself as I'm re-reading a script for the 60th time is, 'Am I entertained? Still?' If the answer is 'yes,' I'll assume other people will be, too.
I'm a very competitive person, but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be, and if that means that I'm eventually better than everyone else, then so be it. But I don't go around comparing and contrasting myself with other actors if I can help it. It's also, I think, the key to my success.
My family put a lot of emphasis on homework, so there weren't too many comic books or video games for me, when I was growing up.
It's the way the business works, you're not just an actor, you're a diplomat and a publicist and a politician, and there are certain expectations.
I have very high expectations of myself. I'm a very competitive person but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be and if that means that I'm eventually better than everyone else then so be it.
I'm hoping that what I am or what I'm not ethnically doesn't limit me in anyone else's eyes. I guarantee you it doesn't in mine.
There'll be moments when I'm out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I'll remember if I were actually an inmate, I'd only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I'd be in my cell. It's kind of a downer.
My character in 'Prison Break' needs to be formidable. In reality, I'm not very tough at all.
In my career as an actor, there is a catchphrase that Scofield always says often in regards to his brother, 'Have a little faith.' In my own career as an actor, there were times when I was the only one who believed in myself in the face of the odds.
I'm neither sexy nor a star.
I made a decision not to work out because I'm lazy and also, the character is not a superhero. I didn't want him to be a buff guy with Jackie Chan moves because the point is he's smarter than your average Joe.
Professionally speaking, the proudest moment was when I booked the 'Human Stain.' I knew it had Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise on board, and the director Robert Benton was an academy award winner for 'Kramer vs Kramer.'
I certainly learned how to break down a text at Princeton, which helps me break down a script - or at least that's the line I feed my parents when they start wondering where all that good money went.
Unfortunately, I'm allergic to all animals and even some people.
Acting was something I needed like air. It wasn't something I could walk away from.
I wanted to be involved in TV and film in some capacity, so a compromise, because acting seemed unrealistic, and so risky, was to get into the production side. And it was a really fortunate, smart move looking back on it, because it gave me perspective on another side of the business.
You only cry for help if you believe there is help to cry for.
I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.
I think it's a very dangerous game to play when you assume that just because someone's an entertainer, they're automatically a role model. Entertainers are there to entertain. They aren't there to teach your children the lessons that you haven't bothered to teach them at home yourself. They're just doing their own version of entertaining.
I think there's something about evil that is thoughtless and relentless and incredibly frightening because it can't be reckoned with, reasoned with or stopped.
I think what you learn, working on a film or TV set, is how to tune certain things out. You've got 60-100 people swirling around you, each of them with a very important job to do.
I didn't come to Hollywood to get on magazine covers or start my Porsche collection or to enjoy that kind of lifestyle, to go to the right parties and meet the right people.
When I got to college, acting suddenly seemed like a very risky proposition and all my friends were going to law school or med school or Wall Street.
Prison Break is so far-fetched, I had to make viewers believe that Michael is capable of making the impossible possible.
Michael Scofield is someone everyone can relate to, but nobody would want to be in his shoes.
I've never seen American Idol but I am grateful to them. That show is one of Fox's biggest moneymakers, and some of that money goes to pay for shows like Prison Break. Simon Cowell's been signing my paychecks and for that I say thanks.
I'm kind of a dork. I don't have much game. I'm not particularly comfortable in bars or clubs. I much prefer being home playing Scrabble, having dinner with a couple friends, going to see a movie, or losing a whole weekend to Season 14 of Law and Order or The Simpsons.
I have to laugh internally when I'm asked in interviews what nightspots I like to hit. I just don't have answers... so sometimes I make them up.
I noticed that I got a better space in the line in Starbucks when I had my tattoo. People associate tattoos with a certain edge. Then I open my mouth, and something completely different comes out.
I'm one of those actors who's going to have to create a space for themselves. It's very easy to be the young Tom Cruise, because Hollywood knows what to do with you. But if you're someone who's bringing someone slightly left of center to the table, you're not a sure thing.
The mail amazes me. I sometimes get these letters that are ten pages, and handwritten, from women pouring their hearts out and, for security reasons, I can only respond with a headshot and 'Dear so and so, be good. WM.' It never feels like enough.
Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.
Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.
There's nothing the Internet can tell me about myself that I don't already know. The rest is foolishness and people killing time.
I've never tried writing at a coffeehouse. I just know instinctively it's not for me.
I surrender the idea of having some kind of control over the arc of my career a lot of the time because you never know what tomorrow's going to bring.
An actor's job is to embrace emotions and situations that in real life we spend all of our time running away from.
I spend my weekends sleeping and watching DVDs, and eating at restaurants within a 2-block radius of my apartment.
Entertainers are there to entertain. They aren't there to teach your children the lessons that you haven't bothered to teach them at home yourself.
To be honest, I find going out pretty scary and intimidating. Got all those people checking you out, with only one purpose: hooking up. I'm quite the dork, I'd rather sit home and play Scrabble. But that doesn't get you a girl, does it?
My definition of cool is finding your own definition of cool and not necessarily taking your lead from what other people tell you or from what you might read from magazines or see on TV.
It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult.
I'm very pleased with being a part of the Bean Pole family. It's a relationship that makes sense to me. I'm very pleased to have my name associated with Bean Pole Jeans.
I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does, which is try to find scripts written for white actors - or Jodie Foster, who reads scripts for male actors.
