Last week, at the party for the new play Blood From a Stone, Vulture caught up with Billy Crudup and quizzed him on his upcoming role as Timothy Geithner in HBO’s adaptation of Too Big to Fail. “I got to speak to some of his aides, and I got to go down to the New York Fed and get a quick tutorial on what was happening there,†Crudup told us. “It’s a really interesting and impactful story — to get to play somebody that was intricately involved in those enormous decisions was a new kind of experience for me.†So what did you actually learn about the financial crisis? “Well, that we were in really, really big trouble. That the potential of 30 percent unemployment was a day away. There were enormous financial … and to hear an actor talk about economics is a really disgusting thing, so you probably don’t want to print that. To hear actors talk about anything is really disgusting. I could talk about my hair; maybe that would be more appropriate. Or my hoodie. †To hear more self-deprecating celebrity quotes, click through our Party Lines slideshow.