Tony Hale moved to New York in pursuit of a woman who had already left the city. Twenty-three and skittish with ambitions of becoming an actor, Hale hoped to replicate the exact journey of his mentor Tina Williams, or at least some of her exuberant adventures. Williams was a New Yorker who traded her city’s hassles and opportunities for the lingering summers and fleeting winters of Tallahassee, Florida, the same city that Hale and his family moved to when he was twelve. Hale was uninterested in sports so his parents enrolled him in a young-actors’ theatre run by Williams. His first encounter with the droll director was revelatory. “She’d talk endlessly about New York and the theatre there,” he said. “The city became romanticized for me. She came to represent New York living, that lively and artistic personality.”

Today, Hale is best known for two of his television roles: the nervy man-child Buster Bluth in “Arrested Development” and Gary Walsh, the blinkeredly loyal assistant to the Vice-President that he currently plays in “Veep.” In both shows, Hale demonstrates a talent for playing an emasculated man involved in a symbiotic relationship with an older, more powerful woman. In “Arrested Development,” Hale’s character orbits his mother (a calculated and austere Jessica Walter), soothing her insecurities while suppressing his own growing resentment toward her. In “Veep,” Hale plays a kind of politician whisperer, quietly reminding his boss (a frenzied Julia Louis-Dreyfus) of the names of various dignitaries and leading her through the typical terrain traversed by an important stateswoman.

The vividness that he brings to these characters does not echo his early relationship with Williams (or his mother). The director created, in her troupe, an environment where teen-agers could discover something more about themselves and, in some cases, their talent. (Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry David’s wife on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is another alumn of the group.) “I enjoyed making people laugh, but it’s not the material that I remember,” Hale said. “Acting wasn’t the prevailing cultural expression in our town,” he continued. Tallahassee was dominated by sports. “So this felt like a safe space. We accepted one another’s idiosyncrasies. I think we knew how rare and valuable the environment was. Tina and the theatre became everything to me.”

Hale, who came from a military family, wasn’t sure if he could make a living from acting. He graduated from Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama, with a journalism degree. But, when he returned to Tallahassee, Hale fell in with another woman who inspired his path: Linda Smeltzer, a church youth worker. “For eight months, Linda built my acting confidence,” he said. “In 1995, that’s what tipped me to move to New York and to try to make a vocation of my hobby.”

Hale’s first performance in New York was a production of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” held in a parking lot in the East Village. For a number of years, he moved between bedsits and friends’ couches. He waited tables, but his tendency toward hypersensitivity made it hard to deal with customer complaints. Hoping for a break, Hale joined an organization, paying for the opportunity to read lines of advertising copy in front of agents. “After the fifth time, I thought, This is bullshit,” he said. “Then, later that day, I got a call back from one of the agents.”

This led to a string of jobs in advertisements, but soon Hale became pigeonholed as a commercials actor and couldn’t secure a TV and film agent. Finally, in 2002, a company agreed to put him forward for television auditions. After bit parts on “The Sopranos” and “Sex in the City,” Hale was invited to read for the role of Buster Bluth in “Arrested Development.” Though he auditioned in front of the casting director in New York, his tape had to be sent to Los Angeles for the final decision. “In those days, in the time it took for the tapes to cross the country, the director typically found someone else,” Hale said. “I figured I’d have a good time and let it go. When I found out they wanted me to fly over, I could not believe it. My abiding memory, apart from being tremendously excited at the prospect of free food, was visiting Old Navy to buy more underpants.”

“A sitcom is all I’d ever wanted,” he continued. “I was given that and yet still found myself wanting the next thing.” Hale believes that this fidgety feeling is a remnant of earlier years. “When you spend years being ambitious, it becomes a habit. My twenties now seem like this rush of ambitious energy, ploughing through trying to make something work,” he said.

“I’m not saying that ambition is bad,” Hale added. “It’s part of hope and human nature. Especially in this industry, people always ask, ‘What are you working on next?’ But I was so far into that mentality that I had begun to miss the reality of my situation. There was a moment when I thought, I can’t live my life like this. I have to wake myself up.” Hale believes that the antidote is “the discipline of contentment,” something that he tries to practice every day. Hale has even written a children’s book about it, called “Archibald’s Next Big Thing.”

Still, the tension remains. “The struggle of staying present remains a daily discipline for me,” Hale said. “I am so thankful to be working, to have a job. If I am ever not excited about an Emmy nomination then someone needs to slap me. But, yes, I do often find myself thinking, What’s next?”