"It's always been like the perfect stock," says Walton Goggins. The 52-year-old actor isn't talking about his portfolio — although that's probably doing well lately too — but his acting resume. As he explained during a recent "Salon Talks" conversation, "It's gone down, but it's always kind of gone up." After three decades in a Hollywood career that's most often described as "scene stealing," with memorable roles on series like "The Shield," "Justified" and "The Righteous Gemstones" and movies like "Django Unchained" and "The Hateful Eight," Goggins this year reached "a new hilltop" with his Emmy-nominated role on Amazon's "Fallout."

Playing "a noseless cowboy bounty hunter who's been roaming the post-apocalyptic wasteland for 200 years" — as well as the same character's earlier movie star incarnation — Goggins brings his trademark blend of sly humor and chilling menace to a role that anchors the iconic video game's adaptation. He also brings a whole lot of psychological mettle to a physical transformation that he admits verges on "psychogical torture."

The Georgia-raised Goggins also talked to us about what it was like inside the first wave of "peak TV," pushing past Southern stereotypes and the "new normal" of his "Fallout" breakthrough.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Let's talk about “Fallout.” You have said you're not really much of a gamer guy.

No.

How much did you know going in, and how did they rope you into this?

How did they rope me into it? Well, Jonathan Nolan, just that name alone is enough to be roped into anything for me. But it started with a conversation with Jonah, Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, our executive producers. We just got on a Zoom call and we started talking. Literally five minutes into the conversation, I said, "I'm in. I don't know what ‘Fallout’ is. I don't know the game. I don't care that it's based on a game. You could do it on a comic book, you could do it on whatever. It just came out of your imagination. If it's with you guys, I'm in."

They said, "Well, don't you want to know what you're playing?" And I said, "Sure, but it's irrelevant." They said, "Well, you're playing a noseless cowboy bounty hunter who's been roaming the post-apocalyptic wasteland for 200 years. You don't have a nose." I said, "Yeah, you know what? Maybe I should read those scripts. Wait a minute. What?" But it didn't take me long. Two episodes into reading them, I called them back immediately and I said, "I understand what you guys are doing, and I think it's revolutionary, and I'd love to go on this journey with you."

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You have played a trans woman, you've done prosthetic work playing a person much older than yourself, but did you know what you were getting into when you were going to sit down in that makeup chair? You've said, it's like with Jim Carrey doing “The Grinch,” it's kind of a little bit of psychological torture.

It really is psychological torture. Venus [his "Sons of Anarchy character] was different. I mean, that was my girl, and it took about four hours in the chair for that, but I was being made beautiful. I did one movie for a friend, it was one of the “Maze Runner” [films]. I was already working in South Africa, so I said, "Yeah, man, I'll pop in there,” and that experience was traumatic for me. The story itself was fantastic, but getting in the makeup chair and the time that it took and how I looked, I had them cover up the mirror. It was traumatic, and I thought, I will never, ever do that again — that, or work with snakes. I've done both of them a couple of times since.

I don't think I let myself think about it too much until the very first day that we were going to take this for a test run and apply everything. Luckily for me, Vincent Van Dyke, who's one of the best prosthetic artists in the world, was designing the piece with Jonah and myself. They invited me to be a part of that process, and Jake Garber, who is one of the best special effects makeup artist in the world, has been a friend of mine for over 15 years now. We've probably done seven movies together. He does Sam Jackson........

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