Do you think somebody who is small but psychologically intimidating is just as scary as someone who is big, brawny, and stupid? Yeah. Maybe that's a kind of archetypal fear in American culture, because we've always put such premium on deeds rather than words, on physical strength, being stoic, being the hero, being the cowboy, so we worry about the little guys who talk too much. America has a deep mistrust of being verbal, so we kind of like our villains to be verbal. It reinforces prejudice that we already hold.

You recently were in a movie called Jumping Off Bridges, in which you played a man who'd lost his wife to suicide and his daughter in a car accident. It was one I couldn't refuse. A young woman [Kat Candler] I had taught Shakespeare to years ago in Jacksonville, Florida, [became] quite a good screenwriter and director in her own right. She lives in Austin, Texas. She sent the script to my agent. I thought it was so spare and grown-up that it would be really a nice thing to do. I liked the idea that we had completed some kind of circle. It was really different for me to play such a mild, everyday kind of character.

We've been left with a cliff-hanger on Lost. Are there any secrets you can reveal? What I should say is that I probably know only slightly more than you do. I only know what I see in the script, so I'm maybe two or three scripts ahead of you. But the drama in the operating room is ongoing, and I think I can also tell you that while Ben is incapacitated, a power struggle will begin to happen within the Others community. There's a new character coming along that may be as scary as Ben. As if Juliet weren't scary enough …