I was a little nervous coming in mostly because my first scene was with Martin Sheen, who I'm a huge fan of.

I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out what will happen in an acting career.

There is no handbook about how a career is going to go.

In Washington, there are jobs that have official titles: chief of staff, campaign manager, director of communications. Then there are all these vague and murky headings over people who are just special consultants or advisers. We really don't know what their gig is.

I get up in the morning, have a job to do, go there, come home, be with the family, that's it.

Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else.

I had gone to a talent show - I was interested in American hip-hop music - with my older brother, to another town, and my town was attacked. I went from having an entire family to the next minute not having anything. It was very painful.

No one in my family is in show business, unless you count dog shows as show business.