I was a cop in the Las Vegas Police Department in 1957. I was very young when I joined. But then I became a federal narcotics agent after that, in Vegas, and that propelled me into my future to fight the drug traffickers.
The Onion Field, that one got pretty close to me because I was a cop when it happened. I saw some of the indifference that my police department showed to the surviving officer.
What my parents taught me was that the hallmark of a thriving democracy was an effective and respectful police force.
If I see a police officer behind me, and I can pull over into, like, a shopping center or something, I do it.
You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.
I'd never been in a police state. I didn't know what it was. I knew that it was, in the general way that people know that two and two is four, but it had no emotional value for me until I found myself in the middle of it.
California always struck me as a police state.
Having had polio never held me back as I got older. Although having one leg smaller than the other isn't much fun, I could always get about without any trouble. Luckily, in the music industry, everyone was only interested in my singing and playing and not the size of my legs.
I came from being a singer going into jazz. And that's one of the things that polio did for me is it took away my ability to sing with a range because it paralyzed my vocal chords, so that was when I started playing. But I hear the music as if I were singing even when I am playing.
For me, it was important Wonder Woman wouldn't be a Goody Two-Shoes. She has a little bit of attitude, and when she fights, she has a smirk on her face. I didn't want her to be polished. I want people to relate to her.
My heart is in helping people and in the less materialistic side of things, but there's the side of me that's more polished.
At 86, I can easily look back to the last eight decades. Though memory often fails me now, so many images of the past are still clearly polished, and I can yet recall not just an abiding sense of place, but the keen smells, the sensory responses to the events of that past.
After I was cast in the acclaimed film 'Khuda Ke Liye,' I thought it would open up film avenues for me in Pakistan and, maybe, even internationally. When that didn't happen, I decided to use TV as a means of polishing my craft.
If you ask me what I'd rather be doing, well, I'd rather be home in California, watching TV, polishing my tools and working around the ranch.
I worked in my parents' decorating store from six. My mum would get me in every Saturday polishing the paint and straightening the wallpaper for 50p.
John Henry Lloyd is the man I gave the credit to for polishing my skills. He taught me how to play third base and how to protect myself. John taught me more baseball than anyone else.
My mother always told me it wasn't polite to ask what people make.
I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people's expectations of me as a comic actor.
I find it next to impossible to remain politely silent when people prate to me about the glory of being given another chance to live happily ever after!
For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.
