With more than 50 years of credits, two Tony Awards, a pair of Emmys, a Golden Globe and now his second Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans — more than 40 years since the last one, for 1980’s Ordinary People — Judd Hirsch is one of the most respected and hardest-working actors out there. But his reasoning for always working is pretty simple: “When I act, I’m alive — and when I’m not, I’m, uh, just me, who just hangs out.”

The length of Hirsch’s career is one thing, but he’s quick to remind that it took him a bit to find success. “I didn’t get on the boards until about 30,” he says of when he started getting roles on the stage, screen and TV. But his real breakout still took time. “I was 42 when I did Taxi,” he says of his time as Alex Reiger, the world-weary but goodhearted cabbie on the sitcom that ushered in Hirsch’s golden period and the bulk of his award wins and nominations.

But the actor has stayed consistently busy and last year shot Kelly Reichardt’s upcoming Showing Up and appeared for a few unforgettable minutes as Sammy Fabelman’s Uncle Boris in Spielberg’s not-so-veiled film about his life.

“I never got an answer from Steven as to why he cast me. I’m [Boris’] age, but I don’t talk like him,” he says, adding, “The interesting thing in The Fabelmans, everybody’s name is fictional. But mine is the only real one — that was the real name of his uncle. I just found it out.”

In true Hirsch fashion, he didn’t take time off after The Fabelmans. He was right back to work with a starring role in iMordecai, a heartwarming indie about a Polish Jewish senior trying to navigate a changing contemporary world, that reunites Hirsch with Taxi co-star Carol Kane. Hirsch mentions a particular scene from their days on TV when Kane — playing Simka Gravas, the immigrant wife of Andy Kaufman’s Latka — proposes that Alex and Simka have a tryst to make up for her husband cheating on her with another female cabbie. “Carol falls down on a couch and says, ‘Peel me like a grape so I can get out of here,’ and that’s where the chemistry started with us.” Hirsch says the two have been friends ever since. “We Zoom every single month.”

After all these years of steady work, Hirsch has more than a few friends in the industry like Kane, and he also has a lot of insight. He can and has played plenty of lead parts, but he has a philosophy when it comes to the supporting roles that have netted him his two Oscar nominations. “It’s the wholeness of a job that doesn’t have the obligation to make a movie happen,” he says. “But it’s an undeniable part of a movie, without which the film wouldn’t be as good.”

This story first appeared in the March 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.