Television acting

Librettist, poet, and playwright Jack Larson got his career start playing Jimmy Olsen, the cub reporter on the 1950s The Adventures of Superman TV show. He has a cameo role in the new movie Superman Returns as Bo the Bartender. This interview originally aired on April 12, 1993.

The new show's co-creator says it became a writers' room joke on Breaking Bad that if something didn't fit it would go on the Saul Goodman show, or what is now AMC's Better Call Saul.

Perlman played the ruthless leader of a motorcycle gang on the FX series. In his new book, Easy Street (The Hard Way), he talks about having a face "that was not ugly but surely one of its kind."

The actress plays Gemma, the fierce matriarch of the biker gang in the FX series. She's best-known for playing the acerbic Peg Bundy on the long-running show Married With Children.

The actor who brought mob boss Tony Soprano to life on the HBO drama The Sopranos died Wednesday at age 51. Fresh Air listens back to interviews with this co-stars Edie Falco and Jeff Daniels and Sopranos director David Chase to hear their thoughts on Gandolfini's prodigious.

Laura Dern is Amy Jellicoe, a health and beauty executive who returns from a post-meltdown retreat to pick up the pieces of her broken life in the HBO series Enlightened. Series creator Mike White talks about the tone of the show, and whether it's possible for people to really change.

The Scottish actress plays Margaret Thompson, a young Irish widow who marries a corrupt politician on HBO's Boardwalk Empire. MacDonald, who got her start in Trainspotting, tells Fresh Air that she enjoys playing a "strong character" for a change.

The actor plays a righteous federal agent who succumbs to all sorts of temptations on the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire. To build the character of Nelson Van Alden, he says, he worked out an elaborate back story about the agent's childhood. The third season starts Sunday.

The actress play smart, tough Secretary of State Elaine Barrish in the new USA Network miniseries Political Animals. It's another strong role for Weaver, who has starred in films like Alien, Ghostbusters and Gorillas in the Mist.

Student-turned-drug dealer Jesse Pinkman was supposed to die in the first season of the AMC drama. But the writers decided the chemistry between high school teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) was too good to let go.