I was a part of the planning and attack package intelligence team for the strike against Syria in 1983 - in which we lost a pilot and had another one captured until Jesse Jackson got him out - and numerous other operations against Syria both before the Iraq war and during the insurgency.

For years before my Navy enlistment, I had studied the Soviet Union and the KGB's history of political intrigue in preparation for a career in intelligence.

I started my career in Naval Intelligence when I entered as a Russian language interpreter sent to DLI, the Defense Language Institute.

Intelligence officers are a peculiar lot. Whether they are active or retired, their brains are wired for a completely different way of seeing the world around them.

What I find relatively funny is that I'm not a model. I'm five foot six and a half; I have absolutely no dream or desire to be a model, I don't live for fashion. But when an opportunity comes your way very early in your career, like Burberry, you do it.

You start at a young age, going on auditions, and you think you did a good job and expect to get that role, and you don't, and it's a letdown, a disappointment. So you tell yourself to just do the work and disconnect, because you have no control over the outcome.

From what I hear, everyone who does a Marvel movie gets a three-picture deal. I'll be Sam Jackson's stand-in. I'll do eight pictures for Marvel, and then I'll just do indies. Marvel can pay for my indie career.

I've never been one of those actors who plays chess with his career and goes, 'I'm going to wait now and see what project comes up that can move me to this or that level.' I take stuff as it comes, and it just so happens that it hasn't dried up yet, touch wood.