('Mad Men') was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened.

I abhor 'baby talk.' I speak to kids like I would any other person, and they seem to respond to it.

Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky.

My only foray into anything stock-market-related was in my eighth grade social studies class. I have steered clear ever since.

The 12 years that I was improvising are why I got the number of commercials I got when I was in New York and why I got The Devil Wears Prada, and its why I even got in the door for Mad Men.

Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn't been difficult to stick to the script on 'Mad Men.' The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don't think there's room - or need - for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.

Before 'Mad Men,' I definitely had very dry spells and I know what those feel like, and I don't think that ever leaves you as an actor.

I'm a bit of a nerd, and my extracurricular activity is nerd games.

Im pretty quick to delete something off of my phone if its become obsolete. And things like RSS readers have made life easier - all of the headlines are going to be related to a topic Im interested in.

Three times a year, theres Strategicon convention, and I go for the board games. It happens Presidents Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day weekends. You go and take a look at the new board games and meet a couple of board game designers, and you can check out games you dont own from the library and then return them.