One of the things about my ministry is that I have never branded myself as being above the people or superior to people.
I don't think naturally I tend toward anything that's really distinctly branded as adult. I feel like I sort of write for myself as I would've been at 12 or 13 years old.
I think of myself as a journeyman actor. I've got some talent and I work hard, but people like Brando or Pacino - those people are touched by God.
During the era when women were burning their bras - which, by the way, they never actually did - but when women were first becoming liberated, I was 23. And I met a woman who asked, 'Don't you feel bad because you're sort of acting like the stupid airhead blonde?' And I totally surprised myself. I said, 'Liberation can also come from the inside.'
I did a terrible job of composing myself. I was a spoiled brat from Long Island who benefitted from the energy of New York.
I hate committing myself to anything. It's probably the lack of discipline, honestly. I'm probably a spoiled brat worried about getting my way every time.
I get paralyzingly nervous a lot of times, so I tried bravado. The way I dress and carry myself, a lot of people find it intimidating. I think my whole career can be boiled down to the one word I always say in meetings: 'strength.'
Around 2001, I went to rehab in Arizona, and I started to see what was going on and how the past affected me. I started to get a grip on it. But over the next decade, I reverted to the behaviour I used to protect myself when I was young - being mindless, being defeatist and full of bravado.
I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.
I would never call myself a cancer survivor because I think it devalues those who do not survive. There's this whole mythology that people bravely battle their cancer and then they become survivors. Well, the ones who don't survive may be just as brave, you know, just as courageous, wonderful people.
No one ever taught me how to shave; no one ever sat down to watch a Braves game with me. I paid for Yale myself, I lived by myself, I taught myself how to play the guitar. I did this all on my own.
Moving to New York City by myself at 17 was certainly my bravest moment. I bought a one-way ticket and stayed with a friend of a friend and figured it out along the way.
When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.
I look at myself at 19 and think I would never do what I did then now! I was so brazen, so confident, so fearless in a way. And remember, the world was a very aggressive place then.
God put me on this earth to bring souls back to the Kingdom of God. You don't need to pray ten times a day - you just need hope. My music is going to stop war; it's the healing music. I see myself in Brazil, in Syria, in Darfur, and places where they really need hope.
I believe that Brazil was prepared to elect a woman. Why? Because Brazilian women achieved that. I didn't come here by myself, by my own merits. We are a majority here in this country.
Into the Breach' is a wonderful strategy game where you play that you are trying to stop an alien invasion. But of course, 'Zelda: Breath of the Wild' and 'Super Mario Odyssey' are just two of the most superlative games ever made, and so when I have time to completely lose myself in those, it's really, really a joy.
It was natural to see the struggle for dignity for black people in America as a sister struggle of the Jewish struggle. So growing up, it was always a part of my breakfast cereal to think of myself as someone who was part of a larger struggle.
In 'The Next Three Days,' even though it was a prison breakout movie, I was asking myself, 'What would I do? How far would I go for the woman I loved? How far would I go, and what would I do when the person then told me that they were guilty? Could I still believe in them?' So it was very personal.
I do enjoy manga but would not consider myself a 'super-fan,' only really connecting with certain works such as 'Lone Wolf and Cub,' or 'Tekkon Kinkreet,' the more breakthrough works, and 'Akira,' to me, is the daddy of them all.
