Actor Steve Buscemi plays a bit of a villain in the hit series, "Boardwalk Empire." But not in real life. Sometimes nice guys do finish first, as Tracy Smith discovers in our "Sunday Morning" Profile:

It's the stuff actors only dream of: At the red carpet premiere for the final season of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire," Steve Buscemi was the center of attention. After years of playing supporting roles, there's no doubt he's enjoying this moment.

Well, maybe not this exact moment.

"Oh, that's, that's the worst, yeah," he said of the red carpet.

Truth is, Buscemi's much more at ease when he's making everyone else squirm.

Steve Buscemi as "Nucky" Thompson in "Boardwalk Empire." HBO

For years he's been playing the second- or third-fiddle. He was a ruthless gangster (and enemy to all waiters) in "Reservoir Dogs"; and the Best Man from Hell in "The Wedding Singer."

He's been a serial killer ("Con Air"), a kidnapper ("Fargo"), and finally, on "Boardwalk Empire," he's the lead: crooked politician "Nucky" Thompson.

"I never saw Nucky as a leading man," Buscemi said. "I just saw him as he was, like, the guy. He was the guy you had to go through to get things done in Atlantic City."

"But he is the leading man," said Smith. "I mean, he is. He's a romantic lead. He's the guy who gets the girls. He's the boss."

"Well, yeah!" Buscemi laughed.

"You play a lot of creepy guys, but they're sympathetic creepy guys most of the time," said Smith. "There's something that you find to like about them. Is that important to you, to make them likable?"

"It's not important to me that they're likable," he replied. "But there has to be something that I like about them."

As a kid growing up on Long Island, N.Y., Buscemi had dreams of being an actor. But his father -- a career sanitation worker -- had another dream for his four sons: a steady paycheck.

"Whatever civil service exam came up when we were 18, we had to take it if we chose to live under his roof," Buscemi said.

And the idea was? "He was looking out for us."

Buscemi took and passed the test for firefighters, and in 1981 wound up at Engine 55 in Lower Manhattan. He's one of the guys now, but back then it was a different story.

Courtesy Steve Buscemi

"It was very intimidating," he said. "I was just nervous, you know? I was, like, the quietest guy in the firehouse for a long time."

And when his shift ended, he'd moonlight as an actor. He kept up his double life for four years. But when he got a part in the movie "Parting Glances," he quit the department.

The guys at Engine 55 thought he was nuts.

"They were really worried about me," Buscemi said. "Because nobody leaves this job, you know? You just don't. You don't leave, first of all, a great job like this, and then also a secure job."

In a way, he would always stay connected to that job. But in 1985, he needed to see what lay beyond the big red door.

"I was cast as a drug dealer on 'Miami Vice.' And I was like, 'Okay, you really think I can do this? Fine.' And then that was sort of the start of me getting these, you know, in the beginning, really kind of seedy, kind of sleazy characters. And [it] kind of progressed from there."