Actor D.B. Sweeney will be part of an ensemble cast in the Starz network's original television series "Crash," based on the Oscar-winning movie, which premieres Friday. Many will remember him as the cute hockey player who becomes a figure skater in the 1992 movie "Cutting Edge."

Currently he can be seen in the Spike Lee movie "Miracle at St. Anna." He is most proud of his involvement in the 2006 movie "Two Tickets to Paradise," which he co-wrote, starred in, produced and directed. It is now available on DVD.

D.B. stands for Daniel Bernard. Now 46, he is married with children and is hoping they will not follow in his footsteps.

Q: Did you dream of your name in lights while growing up on Long Island?

A: Well, I kind of dreamed of seeing it in lights, but I kind of hoped the lights would be on the Fenway Park scoreboard. I didn't know anybody in show business, and I never thought it was the path I'd go down. I was hoping it was sports, like so many kids.

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PG audio

Hear a longer version of this interview or download it as a podcast for later listening.

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Q: Who pushed you in this direction?

A: I had a teacher senior year in high school. He was a theater teacher, and he basically was a little bit like "High School Musical." He kind of encouraged the jocks to get involved with the plays. I did it as kind of a senior year lark. I went to college and got into baseball my first year. I thought: the only other thing I've done was cook for money or act in a play, so I thought I'll try that.

Q: In "Two Tickets to Paradise," you produce, act and direct.

A: The hard part was producing and directing at the same time as acting. An actor's mentality is very different from that of a director or producer. Sort of the laziest way to describe it is that actors are kind of like children always trying to be creative and carefree. The producer and the director are sort of the parents. It's a very different kind of mindset, and to shift back and forth between the two on the set is very confusing and stressful because you want to be good at both functions. In this case, I was using my own money, so it was additionally complicated by that factor. Very stressful.

Q: Would you ever take on that much again?

A: Never, never again. I did it to get it done. The whole emphasis of this project was to play the part I played in the movie. I wanted to play a comedy role. Somebody you might say is goofy. I got typecast early in my career as the guy who is very intense. Once you get into a certain mold, people see you that way, as much as it's disproved time and again. You know they finally put Bill Murray in some serious roles, and he was good. But it took years and years for somebody to take him seriously that way. The whole market place of Hollywood is very lazy.

Q: What's it like going back to not being in control?

A: It's never easy to try and find new things within the script and to try and excel. That is never really easy or effortless for me, but I loved working for Spike because he's an accomplished guy. I just have to try and figure out where I can bring value to the scenes and serve the greater good of the project. It was filmed in Tuscany for three weeks, so, I mean, it was just fantastic. The same thing with this TV show "Crash." It's as good as any TV that I've seen. So going back to being an actor in those kinds of situations, it's a joy. The times when it's tough being an actor for me is when you're working with a director who doesn't have experience or a script that's not really ready or other actors who were hired, maybe because they are celebrities but not really trained actors. I got to work with great people early in my career, Francis Ford Coppola, John Sayles. The way Hollywood has evolved, the studios and the entities that put up the money tend to like getting inexperienced or green directors, who either wrote the script or come out of the cinematography world, because they feel like they can control those people. The reality is they are just incompetent -- most of them. That is one of the reasons among many that I think the quality of Hollywood movies has eroded dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years.

Q: Does it make it easier to get into a role when you are in costume (in "Miracle at St. Anna")?

A: It was a very easy situation to slip yourself into. You put on your World War II Army uniform, and you are standing in a room that has been decorated to look like [Gen. George] Patton's high command office. It gets very simple to drift into the idea that you are in that place. On top of that, I have enormous respect, some of my closest friends are in the military, and for me to get a chance to play somebody who has risen to the rank of colonel is a great honor. I think we can use some more positive portrayals of the military coming out of Hollywood.

Q: When you were choosing roles, were you thinking about what kind of a film portfolio you were building?

A: Well, I have two small kids now, so there is undeniably a greater focus on the bottom line. I have to provide for them and make a living. I'm not one of these million-dollar actors. I have always been just a working actor. I probably work more than I would like to. I just try and think what interests me right now and what have I not done. I'm a sucker for doing something fun. If somebody wants to pay me to learn how to fly a plane or be a better golfer, that certainly would be a plus -- or if it's filming in Tahiti.

Q: With everything you did in the making of "Two Tickets to Paradise" do you now have more appreciation for the process?

A: Absolutely. I have never been one of those actors who say, "Oh my character wouldn't do this," or "My character never wears an orange shirt," or any of the number of inane things I've heard on movie sets throughout my career. Or actors who say, "You have to call me by my character name because I'm in character." To anybody who says to me, "I'm in character," I say, "You should be in an asylum." If you don't know that you're pretending, then you should really seek medical help. I don't have patience for that stuff. Sometimes when I would come to the set early in my career and they weren't ready, you know, I'd get annoyed because I would come to the set the way a boxer comes to the ring. I want to start the fight. What I've understood now from the other side is sometimes they bring the actors to the set a little early as a way of getting the technicians to hurry up and complete the work. So I've tried being even more prompt getting to the set. The other thing that was a big eye-opener for me was the whole post-production editing process. What I've learned is sometimes it's good not to have all the same actions and have all the same takes. The variety you provide gives the director later on in post-production the ability to construct a more interesting performance as he puts the movie together.

Q: Did being married and having children change anything about your career?

A: It has definitely affected my choices. I was never one for doing hard-core sex scenes or anything like that anyway, but after my son was born, I was offered a role as a child molester. It was a very prestigious respected filmmaker, and I turned it down flat. I said, "I don't want that out there in the universe because someday my son might see that."

Q: Would you encourage your children to go into acting?

A: I'm emphatically trying to discourage them with all the psychology I can muster. I know if I forbid it, I'm sure they'll go into it. I've been trying very hard to encourage them to have a normal childhood as much as that's possible in Los Angles, which is basically a nut house anyway.