One of the things that made me want to be an actor more than ever was seeing a Chekhov play, “The Sea Gull,” when was 14 in the Bronx.
Acting is hard work. At times, it’s very energizing and enervating. It’s childish. It’s also responsible. It’s illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It’s bizarre, diabolical. It’s exciting.
Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.
My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn’t know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.
I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.
I come from the South Bronx – a true descendant of the melting pot. I grew up in a really mixed neighborhood; it was a very integrated life.
I don’t talk politics and I don’t talk philosophy or anything like that, but if you look at my work, you might get an expression of me as a person.
You don’t get to know anybody in a movie until after it’s over. You work less together in a film than you do onstage.
It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for ‘Scent of a Woman.’ It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it. I don’t see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.
I personally think if you’re given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There’s no doubt in my mind about it.
My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted.
There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty. Lee Strasberg is like that, my grandfather was like that. These are the kinds of men I’ve had close relationships with.
All due respect and trying to be as modest as I can be, I am a dancer. But I don’t think I would be on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ mainly because I would be too shy.
I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.
Drinking and smoking grass were a part of my life as far back as I can remember.
I was never very happy with performing; it didn’t turn me on much.
I didn’t go for the needle at all. I never cared for drugs, because I saw what they did to most people. I thought that was the end of the road.
At this point in my career, I don’t have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things. My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.
I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn’t want to do movies that much. I found they took a lot out of you and they were exhausting for me in a lot of ways.
Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.
When you’re reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call “taking up with a writer,” something happens.