I hadn't worked for a year when I had my Prison Break audition and it was the easiest audition I've ever had. I got the script on Friday, went to the audition on Monday and got the part on Tuesday. I was shooting the pilot a week later. I didn't have time to be nervous - it happened so quickly.

You have to love what you do, and you have to need it like you need air. And there's nothing else that would give me the same degree of satisfaction as acting, which is why I can't walk away from it.

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.

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.

If I were to wait only for roles that clarify my racial makeup, I'd be waiting for a very, very long time.

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?

They told me at the end of that test that they wanted me to be a part of this project. I walked out and had a moment of clarity where I thought, not many people will ever have this moment.

You're confronted with the quandary: do I grind things to a halt? Ideally you would, but I have better things to do than educate people.

There's so much we can't express in our day-to-day interaction with people because it's considered inappropriate. And acting is all about being inappropriate.

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.

There has to be a measure of faith. That's what this business is all about: trusting in something that may never show up, that you have no concrete proof of.

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.

Nobody's ever asked me to pay for a meal before I've eaten it, I've never been pulled over just because I was driving the wrong kind of car in the wrong kind of area at the wrong time of night.

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.