Milo Ventimiglia: I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistica...

If you have your mind in the right direction, and your heart is full of the right kind of stuff, you'll succeed and you'll triumph over adversity, over really anything.

Milo Ventimiglia

adversity mind heart

I don't want to impose on anyone else and make anyone else emotional or anything. I tend to quietly cry, kind of turn away.

Milo Ventimiglia

emotional kind want

I tell people, "It's the hardest thing to explain, but it's the easiest thing to understand." And all anybody really needs to know is, the struggles of life, the joy of life, the excitement and the heartbreak of life is something we can all connect to. And I like to hope that the inclusivity of the show [This Is Us] is something that audiences will relate to.

Milo Ventimiglia

struggle heart people

When you're in morgue you're seeing life that no longer exists. It gives you an appreciation when you look someone in the eye, you shake their hand, and you hug your friends, your girlfriend, your family. It just gives you an appreciation for the life that surrounds you. At the same time you understand how fragile it is. That you don't need to be an idiot or get so angry at times.

Milo Ventimiglia

girlfriend eye appreciation

I learned that I'm not young enough to think I know everything. Honestly. I think you hit a certain point in life where you expect that you have so much to learn, and you may think that you've arrived, but you have kind of just begun.

Milo Ventimiglia

kind may thinking

Sometimes you're working in highly emotional scenes and you'll get lost in the moment. You're having fun with your friend at work. It's an opportunity to give to them as much as they've given back to you.

Milo Ventimiglia

emotional opportunity fun

Sometimes I'm an ass, sometimes I'm sweet as peaches.

Milo Ventimiglia

peaches sweet sometimes

You have to pay attention to the work on the page and make it as good as possible because it could be your last.

Milo Ventimiglia

pages pay attention

I just try not to subscribe to the ways of celebrity. I'm not a celebrity, I'm a working actor. A lot of the events -- the parties and the premieres that people go to to get noticed -- I'm just not into. I'll hang out with my friends, go see punk shows, read at home. At the same time, I have a production company, which is a lot of work.

Milo Ventimiglia

friends party home

When your a kid,everybody runs around witha red cape-we all wanted to be SUPERMAN or BATMAN.

Milo Ventimiglia

capes running kids

It's [high school] an interesting time in your life because you're trying to act older and mature but you really have no idea what you're doing. You're scared and it's okay to be scared. It's okay to not know completely what you want or what you should be doing and to stumble a little bit.

Milo Ventimiglia

ideas interesting school

I'm tough on the outside and soft on the inside [...] I'm really a shy guy.

Milo Ventimiglia

squash shy guy

I think there's an initial shedding of the skin of a character when you've played them for so long, almost like a snake losing its skin. But when a job is done, I kind of walk away from it because I know that I need to prep for whatever else I'm going onto - I need to get back to being myself, which... Who knows exactly who that is, with all the talking voices in my head. You know, back to being a bit of a blank slate again. It becomes a necessity as an actor - at least for the way that I act.

Milo Ventimiglia

character long thinking

I think that any good storytelling lends itself to closing a chapter but also knowing that there's a few more volumes beyond that to dream off of.

Milo Ventimiglia

storytelling dream thinking

I love being around people that contribute. It doesn't matter where the good idea comes from. A good idea is a good idea.

Milo Ventimiglia

love-is people ideas

When I was born, they didn't work. They're broken, the nerves in my lower left lip. When I was kid, I would talk out of the side of my face. When I was 16 and came up to Hollywood from Orange County, I was in this cattle call audition for Batman and Robin at Warner Bros., and they interviewed me out front of the studio. When I got home, I was like, "Oh, this was exciting!" But then when I watched the news, I was like, "Mom, what is wrong with my mouth?!"

Milo Ventimiglia

mom home kids

Given the loss of a child or the birth of a child or anything like that, I think it's just I'm more moved by life, the older I get, so it's easier to connect to the characters that I play.

Milo Ventimiglia

loss character children

Some were getting married; some were getting divorced. People were in different places, but you had enough time on this earth to actually get somewhere, and I think that's the exciting thing about being 36 and in your mid-30s. You've been somewhere, and you're going to go somewhere. It's fun; it's exciting.

Milo Ventimiglia

fun people thinking

Unless I'm running and yelling, then you really see how crooked my mouth is!

Milo Ventimiglia

yelling mouths running

It's a great place to be at 36 because you're an adult and you're responsible for how you impact other people, the direction of your own life [too], but you're also young enough to say, "You know what? I'm not sure of where I'm at, and I'm going to change that course and do something different. I'm going to look at life differently." I think that's the magic of that age.

Milo Ventimiglia

impact people thinking

I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.