Everyone has a different path. I knew no one in the acting industry growing up. I never did a play until college. I was not outspoken when I was younger and I hated being the center of attention. But I had a dream of being an actor. I went to NYU and studied theatre. I learned a craft. And began my career straight out of college.

I like playing the contrasting roles. It what inspires me to act. If I look back on my career I am happy that I have gotten to play a wide variety of different roles, from Mike Dexter, to Van Ray in Fast Lane, to Dr. Cullen to Coop.

It definitely gets challenging at times. I travel a lot more now, and its never easy having to leave the kids, even if its for a few days.

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

I love hanging out with friends and family.

Parenting is the most important job on the planet next to keeping Gary Busey off the nation's highways.

My parents were both from extremely different backgrounds. My father's Italian, my mother was of Swedish descent. They're both first-generation Americans.

My mother and father, with my newborn brother and me in the backseat of the 1938 Ford sedan that would be our family car for the next decade, moved to that hastily constructed Army ammunition depot called Igloo, on the alkaline and sagebrush landscape of far southwestern South Dakota. I was three years old.