Wherever I go for the military, they always call me Lt. Dan. They just can't help it.

Sometimes you're in great demand. Then suddenly your career hits the breaks.

Unless you have a long-running series, most actors just go job to job if you're lucky to keep working. You just do a movie or a play or a TV thing, and it's over at some point.

I've never had to compromise myself for a job, ever.

For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me.

I'm doing a little bit of acting, but I can't really say it's going to be a career or even that I'm really suited to it. It's a whole other craft you have to study and be passionate about.

The whole idea is you can't sit around and do nothing. You have to get up and start living one day at a time. That's what I did my entire career. You can't sit around and say, 'Oh, poor me. Nobody likes me. Nobody is giving me a job.' You have to get up and go. If you sit at home and do nothing, that is what is going to happen.

It's a funny thing because I don't want to wish away my privacy. Do I want 'Terminator Genisys' to explode? Absolutely. Do I want to take my career to the next level? Absolutely? You have to trade some things for that. It's all about how you conduct yourself and what you make of the experience.