JONATHAN TUCKER

You can be drinking the wine today, but picking the grapes tomorrow.

I have been blessed to have been working since I was 11. I think horror is an underrated genre. When done really well like in 'The Ruins', it pays homage to some of the stuff I really love in the '70s and incurs some of that energy the fanbase really wants to see.

I grew up, as I joke around, in the 'People's Republic of Charlestown' in the city of Boston. And I was blessed to be raised right there on Monument Square in Charlestown, and every morning I'd hop on the bus and go on a 45-minute ride out to the suburbs in Brooklyn for elementary school. And I got to have my seat, really, in both worlds.

I'm not looking to be famous, but I want a body of work and a moral character that is deserving of fame.

I can tell you the actor who I admire the most. Billy Crudup. Do you know who he is? He's awesome.

I've always used music for my acting, and I do have a kind of a very personal play list that I create.

Whether you're doing Shakespeare or Disney, good work is good work.

I'm not a horror guy, it's not my thing, but I respect it a lot. I know how hard it is to make, especially to make good.

What inspires me in life? The idea that the work and the rewards and the process is the thing.

The successes in the entertainment business are like one percent of the iceberg that you see, and the other ninety-nine percent, which is the rejection and the failure and the work and the toil and the sacrifice, is the rest of the iceberg that's below the water.

I try not to be judgmental. I meditate twice a day. I get some sort of physical exercise. I infuse my life with love. I love what I do, the job.

As a species, we're always seeking out authenticity. We're dying for authenticity. We smell it immediately, and we also smell even the slightest riff of somebody who's not completely true to who they are. We have that ability because, as a species, we have organized around stories. We tell them and we subscribe to them.

My wife calls me grumpy cat. I'm normally a very pleasant person to be around.

My job, and what I've taken such joy in, is the craft of acting and of creating dynamic and authentic characters, and then finding a way to build them within the confines and with the support of the worlds that I've found myself.

You have to defend your character. That's your job, if they're hiring you. That doesn't mean you can't collaborate, but you do have to make some big, bold choices. We do that in real life, too.

I started a nonprofit called The Pegasus Fund, and we take top-performing students from underserved communities, and we commit to sending them for three summers to a nonacademic, holistic summer camp as a means to help them acclimate socially, geographically, spiritually to pilot secondary schools that they hope to attend.

There is a ferocity to MMA and to the training, but there's such a humanity to it too. It takes so much sacrifice and humility to get into it and to rise through those levels. If you look at the fights as a means to test who you are, every one of these fights is an opportunity to see how far you're willing to go up against yourself - and to find and define your limits.

Everything is a lesson, and there's always something to take and to learn. Whether you're winning championships or you have a losing season, you've consistently gotta go back to what you're passionate about and what has brought you to where you are today. For me, it's acting. It is the actual craft of it, and that takes work.

What I've been thinking about recently is the idea of finite and fragility. Either we're acknowledging that our lives here are finite, this moment is finite, and that this whole world is fragile, or we're not, but it is really happening and that is really true.

Mother Nature is a pretty good bioterrorist.

You have to eat, all day, and you have to have the right fuel to get you through different physical and mental obstacles that fighters have to get through. Just dealing with the diet alone becomes an all-encompassing, fully immersive experience. And then, there's the physical side of it, having to put your body through everything required to make you look like a fighter.

My whole day revolves around food. If you think you've won the day, only because you haven't eaten over 1,000 calories, you know that things are off-kilter. That's not a healthy way to be thinking.

You think about acting kind of as an iceberg where you've got that 5% that you see... but in order to have that 5%... you have to have another 95%.

I infuse my life with love. I love what I do, the job.

What's unique for me, as an actor, is this idea that I don't have to be grounded to the natural law of things. I can pull things out of the air and communicate with other spirits and other elements in other languages or forms, but I'm still right here, on the earth. That's a lot of fun.