Unlike many Californians or New Yorkers, college football is a religion down south.

You know how you can be romantic? You can be romantic by going to a beautiful setting, sitting on a park bench, and getting good ole-fashioned golden arches, a.k.a. McDonald's. That's probably the best I can do romantically.

It's an interesting thing to play the heroes of our society, like cops and firefighters. They're the basic heroes that, as little boys and little girls, you look up to as the first heroes of your small, specific community.

Poetry has, in a way, been my bridge to my acting career.

I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.

I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I'd be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.

That's the thing with me being a former athlete: in the way I attack characters and attack poetry is from the base of being an athlete.

I'm a black Catholic raised in Decatur, Georgia, which was very gang-infested. Then, I went to an all-white private high school and excelled in sports and wrote poetry, then played football at the University of Georgia, minoring in drama.

Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.