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NEW YORK (Back Stage) - Tate Donovan looks backwards on his early days in exhibit playing with a honor of horror.

"I was full of myself, competitive, selfish, judgmental, and not generous," he says. "When I was a aggregation junior I was rattling arrogant. I remember locution to myself in college that if I didn't hit an Academy Award by the time I was 30 I would quit. I was so pompous. You think you're so special. Maybe you hit to be that artefact when you move out."

Maybe. Now 47 and considerably more easygoing, he has appeared on film ("Good Night and Good Luck," "Nancy Drew"), TV ("The O.C.," "Damages") and street ("Amy's View," "Picnic"), and never had to take a period job. He can't support wondering what persona luck has played in every this.

It's a topic he has been thinking a aggregation most lately, especially today that he's starring in king Lindsay-Abaire's new off-Broadway play, "Good People," running finished May 8 at Manhattan Theater Club.

It addresses whatever themes that resonate for the actor. Not the least of these is the question of how such pick does anyone hit in chronicle -- or is it mostly unarticulate luck?

"You requirement serendipitous breaks," Donovan said before a advertisement performance. "I don't know ground I get impact and someone added doesn't. My understudy, Tony Carlin, is a great actor, yet every period I get to go discover there and he doesn't. Why is that?"

Directed by Dan Sullivan, "Good People" centers on an encounter between unemployed azygos mom Marge (Frances McDormand), who never left the working-class South Beantown community she was born into, and her ex-boyfriend Mike (Donovan), who is from the aforementioned community but has moved on.

He's today a doctor, mated to an arts professor, and living in a wealthy town meet correct of Boston. This is not a fuck story; it's most class and how the past haw be a external and intrusive world.

Donovan sees a similarity between Marge, who charges backwards into his chronicle for a job, and whatever of his older friends who think he crapper launch them into acting careers. "It crapper be awkward when they say things same 'Hey, I want to get into showbiz. How do I do that?' Everyone thinks it's so easy because they haw hit been the funny banter in high school. That opinion of grouping hitting you up and you're not really existence able to do anything for them -- I colligate to that. It's great to grownup up with older friends, and then you want to go backwards to your life, especially if you no longer hit anything in ordinary with these people."

Donovan also connects with the class issues. Though he grew up in the middle-class community of Tenafly, N.J., his father, a doctor, came from a working-class Irish Christian community in Brooklyn not different South Boston.

One of the more interesting challenges Donovan visaged convergent on the "Southie" accent. Everyone in the cast has effectively merged it into the performance. Initially, Donovan did not want to use it because he felt Mike would hit mostly free himself from it.

"But, I found erst I started using the accent, it fueled the character. It changes your embody and you embellish more urban, more relaxed, more affectionate, and more tactile. Dan said something interesting: 'Women same it. And this guy puts grouping at ease.' It's my artefact of locution I'm from the hood. It's chic and an affectation because underneath it every I'm category of repulsed by the whole thing."

Lindsay-Abaire's module presented another challenge. Donovan is familiar with it: He previously played the grieving ascendant in a Los Angeles creation of the playwright's "Rabbit Hole." It's so graphic that Donovan felt free to paraphrase, and that's a mistake, he presently realized.

"There's a disagreement between locution the distinction as written, 'Tell Denise to give you directions,' and 'I'll hit Denise give you directions,' which I've been saying. The distinction as cursive is a command. It is aggressive and reflects who the character is. His composition is so limited and attached to thoughts and character. Every syllable reveals something."

He credits designer -- "who is stilly and wise, an concealed guiding hand" --- with serving him do his prizewinning impact in "Good People."

As a director himself, with episodes of "Damages," "Glee," "Weeds," "Nip/Tuck," and "Gossip Girl" under his belt, Donovan says actors are often better than they think they are.

"We don't realize what we're giving," he insists. "We essay to be fascinating and curb it instead of meet letting go and trusting it."

As for the future, Donovan hopes he is as fulfilled as he is correct now. Mindful of his youthful arrogance, he advises teen actors to lighten up. "Study, essay to be as good as you can, enjoy what you're doing, and be category to people. It's such more essential than you haw think."