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much funnier. I mean, he's great in it and all… I would like to have some moment s of real, hear t felt emotion and some moment s of slapstick." Though Steve has been acting for eighteen years, he feels like his career is just getting started. "There's a saying, and unfortunately, it's a little bit true, 'That a man's career is a marathon and women's is a sprint as an actor.' And I feel like, 'cause I'm 40 now, I have just started to figure out what's going on in this life. 'Cause I had no idea in my 20s. Lost in my 30s. And now I'm just starting to go, 'Whoa. Interesting.' Now, I want to play a character where it's like: What if those guys [Van and Kev] grew up? What if that character were a little bit more introspective, a little bit more reserved? Same elements, 'cause it's me, obviously, but what if it's the adult version? That's exciting to me." There have been times Steve felt a bit like he was doing a disservice to his career by playing characters the way he plays them. "Like with Van, he plays the dumb jock, right? That's the quick TV Guide description. I was like, Oh God, what the fuck? I'm playing a dumb jock. Typecast myself as the fucking dumb guy. Then with Shameless, it was like, 'Oh yeah, that's what Steve does.' Then I thought to myself, I don't think that's true, because there's a lot of different elements. I think it was my own insecurity of my lack of knowledge in certain things, I guess. Not being smart enough 'cause there's a lot of smart people in this industry that come from amazing schools or they've done theater or they're writers…" he ruminates. Our food is delivered to the table. A few minutes after digging into his salad, Steve goes on a comical tirade about the croutons. "These are the worst croutons in the history of croutons. They almost want me not to have teeth..." Like cracked ice, our conversation splinters into myriad directions, taking us well beyond superficial chitchat. His off-the-cuff recollections feature sidesplitting impersonations and thoughtful musings. And he is not averse to speaking openly about his position on certain situations or about what worries him. The vulnerability he exhibits is a little unexpected, until he shares that Jackie Gleason's vulnerable nature is what he specifically admired about the actor, who comes up when I ask Steve if his personality comes out in the characters he portrays. "Jackie Gleason, from The Honeymooners, would do things that I see myself doing. He would do goofy stuff, then he would be angry, then he would be sweet, then he would have to apologize to his wife. He believed it, which made him so vulnerable, made him super likable. 'Oh my God, I want to do that.' You cannot not put your personality [into the characters you play] — that's impossible." Growing up, Steve appreciated actors that weren't afraid of looking like a fool, like the John Ritters and Jim Carreys of the world. "I like looking for those vulnerable moments. The definition of vulnerable that I like is when you can affect and be affected." It's in these introspective moments that you realize Steve's profound depth. A magnetic storyteller, I am in awe of the passion and energy he pumps into the topics we dive into. Steve punctuates our conversation with adages, questions, and theatrical verses — "Let it goooo!" and "Tale as old as time…"– from movies his children watch. He prefers French Press coffee ("You sons of…" he jokes with our server, when he finds out that they don't serve it), and lets out an enthusiastic, "Yes!" when he finds that they have Splenda. My cheeks literally ache from all the laughing he elicits from me in our two hours together. Given his natural knack for entertaining, it comes as a shock that acting was at the tail end of his list of professions he wished to pursue as a kid. Born in Texas and raised in Southern California, while in junior high Steve thought he would become an orthopedic surgeon. After performing a mock surgery on a foam arm at camp, he thought: This is what I want to do! "I don't have a fear or gag reflex when it comes to blood, tissue, muscle when it's opened up, so I knew that I could handle that." But it was the idea of specifically healing bones that appealed to him, he tells him. Then, he thought he'd be a stand-up comedian, which makes sense as his comedic timing is excellent –all it takes is a look or the nuanced way he delivers a line for Steve to provoke laughter. "Then I start playing basketball, and I'm like, I'm going to be a basketball player." Determined to get a basketball scholarship, he moved to Denver, Colorado, and obtained one from a junior college. "After playing two years of that, I was like, I don't want to play basketball. It was too hard." He launches into this hyperbolic story about this "Adonis" on his basketball team. "Just a fucking god, right? Had a 10-pack, huge cock, just had a line of girls ready to fuck him. And I was like, 'I can't compete with that.' He would never workout. Just eat Twizzlers, watch ESPN, rebound the ball, dunk on everybody, shoot 3s. And there's me, just drinking protein shakes, running, lifting weights, shooting a thousand shots in the morning, a thousand shots at night and I couldn't even get near him." Steve admits that he became a great basketball player, and could've went further with it, but his interests changed. After taking a few acting classes ("A lot of it came natural."), he was hooked. With his heart now set on becoming an actor, Steve moved back to Southern California to live with his brother, and sent his resume to several Hollywood agents. "I had this headshot with my cover letter, a bunch of things on my resume that I just made up. I was like, Blue Dog River, Lead!" You did not. I laugh. "Oh yeah. Absolutely. Just made up tons of shit that I've done. And the cover letter was like: 'I'm going to be a huge star. I'm a diamond in the rough. I'm going to make tons of money. If you want to make money…' It was just a ver y ballsy letter." He landed an agent, and ended up booking his ver y first audition: a Coca-Cola commercial. His agent warned him that this triumph would only create unrealistic expectations, and he soon realized what she meant. "100 auditions later, I didn't book any. It takes a lot. You have to have rhino skin 'cause you hear no so many times. It starts to pick away at your soul, where you don't think you're good enough. There's so many actors that go through that. They're just like, 'You're not pretty enough. You have this wrong…' And the ones that don't listen are the ones that succeed." Recently, Steve has been able to show off his scope of talent and portray characters outside of the Kev-Van box. In the comedy, Unleashed, which Steve stars in alongside Kate Micucci and Justin Chatwin, he plays a dog-turned-human. "It was a lot of fun. Naked