He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he also wrote for the school newspaper, The Daily Beacon, as an entertainment writer covering the bar, music, and theater scene.

[4] In 2005, he performed in three separate productions: in June he played an anthropomorphic shark in Adam Bock's Swimming in the Shallows; in August he appeared as Bo Decker in a production of William Inge's classic Bus Stop; and in December he was Beethoven in the Peanuts spoof Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead (for which he received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor nomination).

[5][6] He played the villainous Edmund in the Public Theater production of King Lear starring Kevin Kline in the title role and directed by James Lapine.

He featured as Dean Bendis, an undercover police officer, in a black ops group of the LAPD headed by Dylan McDermott in the TNT series Dark Blue.

He played a young rookie cop the 2010 criminal drama Brooklyn's Finest directed by Antoine Fuqua and had a lead role in the horror film Devil.

[13] The actor appeared in an episode of When They See Us,[14] and starred in the video game Telling Lies, which was released in August 2019.