John Hawkes

I do all kinds of roles - nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho, nerd, psycho - and occasionally someone kind of normal. It's weird, when I lived in Austin I was always cast as pretty normal people. But when I moved to Los Angeles I was immediately branded a psycho.

When I over-prepare, I try to let it all go and forget all about it when the camera rolls, so I can just be present with the other actors and allow what's going to happen to happen without too much preconception.

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school.