Stanley Tucci has played soldiers, gangsters, priests, and even Stanley Kubrick. But he’s never related to a role more than his Devil Wears Prada character.

The actor didn’t hesitate when asked by Kal Penn, today’s guest host on The Kelly Clarkson Show, “Which of your characters is most like you in real life?”

“Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada,” he immediately responded, explaining, “He’s very stylish, and he can be a bit caustic. But he’s got a good heart.” Then with a suitably devilish smirk, he joked, “I mean, I think I have a good heart.”

Over the course of his four decades in Hollywood, the New York-born actor has played everything from a nameless soldier in his 1985 film debut, John Huston‘s black and white mob comedy Prizzi’s Honor, to a slew of mobster and criminal roles in films like Billy Bathgate, The Public Eye, and The Pelican Brief.

Films like Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers and Woody Allen‘s comedy Deconstructing Harry showcased his comedic chops and dashing charm. After a string of winning romcoms and broad comedies, he was cast in The Devil Wears Prada. The film follows an Anna Wintour-like fashion media mogul (Meryl Streep) who tests the grit of a plucky young assistant (Anne Hathaway), who gets by with a little help from friends like Nigel, the fictional magazine’s witty art director.

Reflecting on his career last October, Tucci shared that he’s “always gone through these fluctuations, and sometimes it’s just the business,” but “sometimes it was personal reasons why you can’t work.” One surprising reason he found himself with a narrowed range of opportunities was, paradoxically, the success of The Devil Wears Prada, after which Tucci said he “couldn’t get a job.”

“I didn’t quite understand that, but that’s just the way it was,” he continued. “So I went and did stuff that I didn’t necessarily want to do, but I did it.”

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Tucci continued to play a staggeringly diverse array of characters, from the sadistic serial killer George Harvey in The Lovely Bones (which earned him an Academy Award nomination in 2009), to Jack Warner, the pugnacious studio boss in the miniseries Feud: Bette and Joan (which earned him an Emmy nomination in 2017).

To date, Tucci has won six Emmys, two Golden Globes, and two SAG awards for his work. But nothing can quite compare with the sophistication and sardonic genius of Nigel Kipling.

You can watch the rest of Tucci’s interview with Penn on The Kelly Clarkson Show below.