What interests me is the idea that classics is actually quite democratic. It isn't only the toff, upper-class subject it's often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it.
Yes, I'm a complete itinerant. I keep making attempts not to be, but then circumstances make me uproot and go somewhere else again. It's not the worst thing in the world at all; I love it. In fact, I'm probably horribly addicted to it.
When I work, obviously the material is the first and most important thing. Then the director and who I'll be working with. And then the location comes into it. Where is it shooting? Because I have a family that has to uproot to do that with me.
I do not come bearing a party label on my sleeve - or a quick fix in my back pocket. I do not come with a rigid ideology in my heart - or a soul that tells me to go it alone. I do not come to uproot tradition - or to be imprisoned by it.
I've had 60 years of ups and downs, and all of the downs that I've had, I'm happy that I've had them because it's taught me to appreciate all the ups.
I'm not going to get upset because somebody said something bad about me.
What makes me laugh is, of course, the absurd, the horror - anything that upsets me.
No, nothing really upsets me.
It's what my friends always tell me, that I'm a strong person and the best. But my head has to be clear before I run so nothing upsets me.
I have to say that deporting people and calling them 'bad hombres,' then kicking families out with visa violations, upsets me.
We don't get the greatest tools to deal with anger. It's like, 'Hey, count to 10.' When someone really upsets me, how do I respond? I don't usually start counting to 10 and breathing deeply.
The thing that upsets me the most is the entitlement of people that will stand with a flag and say to some other people that they need to go back to where they came from. When, in fact, they also would need to go back to where they came from, because you need to go all the way back to the beginning.
The worst thing for me is to not taste what I'm eating, to not know what I'm eating. It upsets me to no avail.
The Man Upstairs is taking care of me.
It makes me feel kind of weird, but obviously the Man Upstairs gave me something and it touches people, and I'm just so blessed.
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.
When my mother was raising me, she moved us upstate to the Woodstock area. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. She planted all her own vegetables.
I grew up in a family in which no male upstream from me had ever finished high school, much less gone to college. But I was taught that even though there was nothing I could do about what was behind me, I could change everything about what was in front of me. My working poor parents told me that I could do better.
I graduated from high school in '62 and I didn't know any people who were gay. I'm sure there were people, but I didn't know any. For years and years, I guess, I was very uptight about being a gay actor. I thought it would make me less hirable.
I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in Brooklyn. It's what gave me my drive to succeed, the upward mobility I've been after my whole life.
