Terry Gross

Your father owned a jewelry store in Princeton.

And you sometimes work there.

And apparently it was a famous store.

And I would presume you sold a lot of jewelry to men buying gifts for girlfriends and fiancés and wives.

Yes.

And mistresses.

What was it like as a man selling to men who know nothing about women's jewelry but want to give something to the woman in their life who they love or they want to impress or they want to make up with?

So you had a significant role in a film I really love, A Serious Man, that was made by the Coen brothers.

And Michael Stuhlbarg plays a man whose wife is leaving him.

He might be losing his teaching job.

A student is kind of blackmailing him.

His whole life is falling apart.

And he's also wrestling with the concept of God and with his Judaism.

You play his brother.

You're a gambler.

You're broke.

You have a sebaceous cyst that's become a big problem.

You're in misery.

And it's a kind of modern-day version of the book of Job.

At least that's how I think of it.