Tom Pelphrey, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, is an outstanding actor who has been doing impressive work on the stage and screens big and small for more than 20 years, picking up along the way two Daytime Emmys for his portrayal of Jonathan Randall on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light and Critics Choice and Primetime Emmy nominations for his turn as Ben Davis, the bipolar brother of Laura Linney's Wendy, on the Netflix drama series Ozark.

But Pelphrey is currently experiencing unprecedented levels of acclaim - and Emmy buzz - for his extraordinary performance on the HBO drama series Task as Robbie Prendergrast, a single father and sanitation worker in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, who is mourning the murder of his brother and robbing the biker gang responsible for his brother's death, which puts him in the crosshairs of both that gang and an FBI task force.

Over the course of a conversation at the L.A. offices of THR, the 43-year-old reflected on his path to acting, and how his career only really began to take off after he got sober on Oct. 1, 2013; how he landed on seasons three and four of Ozark, and how his work on that show led to other high-profile opportunities; why he was so drawn to - and personally effected by - playing Robbie on Task, which Esquire has described as  the role of a lifetime ; plus more.

You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player above or read excerpts of it - lightly edited for clarity and/or brevity - below.

On training with Mark Rylance while in college…

 We got to go for an entire semester and study Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre. And at that time, Mark Rylance was the artistic director of the Globe. It was everything you could hope for as an actor. Here we are in New Brunswick doing Meisner, kitchen sink drama, crying, screaming, punching holes in walls, just getting your rage out, getting it natural, getting in touch with their feet, all these things, but it's really internal and intense. And then to get to go to the Globe stage? I mean, it's incredible… suddenly they're talking about our 

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