I'm one of relatively few stage-trained actors who doesn't much like acting on stage. It feels kind of like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, which I did when I was eight. When it was all over, I was glad I had done it, but most of the time when it was actually happening, I was just kind of hanging on for dear life.
Reading is what people did before YouTube, and I love retro stuff!
I cannot recall a time that I did not believe in Jesus Christ.
I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero.
I did radio back in the era when we did radio drama.
I was 39 when I did, essentially, a three-quarter sleeve on my left arm. It was very late in life, which is good: I can't think of any decision I made at 19 that I'd be happy with at 39 or even now, at 51.
I've lived a charmed life. I married the only girl I ever loved and did the only job I ever loved.
My mom and I have been through a lot. But when you think about it, whose life is perfect? It is just really good because we did this together.
There are projects I've done, such as 'Queen,' where I played Halle Berry and Danny Glover's son, where I'm so extremely proud of the work that I did that I will sit down and watch that any time.
I did a music festival in France. I'm not going to name names, but there were bigger bands and DJs on before me, and throughout their set, all I could hear them chanting was 'Hodor!' And I was, like, 'Oh, please stop! It's so disrespectful to the other acts!' In a way, obviously, I loved it, but it was kind of embarrassing at the same time.
I felt like an ugly duckling back in school. I was a complete tomboy with short hair. Never in my dreams did I imagine that I would walk the ramp with 6-inch heels. My friends can't believe that I'm an actor, because I was such an introvert in school.
People never expected a boy from a small town to have a life like I did.
Maybe I would have become an actor. I was a very outgoing kid, but being in the hospital - being outside of social action for so long - turned me into an observer. Actually, right after I got out of the hospital, I did start writing a novel, but the book was so transparently about me that I stopped.
What no one tells you - or maybe they did tell me, and I chose not to listen - is that there's really no 'coming back' from bleached platinum hair. You sort of have to cut it all off and start over.
Was Sen. Barack Obama a Muslim? Did he ever practice Islam? The presidential candidate officially rejects the claims, but the issue of Obama's personal faith has re-emerged amid conflicting accounts of his enrollment as a Muslim during elementary school in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Sometimes I play something, and I haven't recorded it, and I don't know where it came from, why my hands did what they did, what key it was in, anything.
The Republican Party - that was the end of the Republican Party. What Pete Wilson did with the xenophobia and the negative attitude, all this sort of anti-crime backlash.
In the case of the 'Saint' movie, I did do some research. I visited a few shelters. But usually, my stuff just comes out. I don't have any control over that.
I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.
I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.
I was appointed to Cabinet three times; on no occasion did I pitch for what position I wanted.
I've known Lisa Lampanelli for quite some time. We did the Shatner roast together. Lisa didn't know Shatner, but she's a popular roaster, so she was invited to do it, and she is fantastic. Actually, despite her public image, she's a very sweet lady and very sensitive. She cries very easily. Most people don't know that.
I had never taken acting at Brown to be the beginnings of a career. I always did it just for fun.
There were so many things in Baltimore not many people know about. I had struggles with my pitching coach. A lot of guys did.
I think the past is not important. For every player, for every single player, the past stay there. If you did well in the past, OK.
A lot of people say I tried to emulate Tupac, but when I look back at my career, we're very different artists. I took pages out of Pac's book, of course, and lots of other rappers - Biggie, Nas - of course you take pages out of those books, but you eventually make it your own thing. And I think I did a good job of that.
My views about the safety of Jews in the world have not been changed by the work on the Dreyfus affair or, for that matter, by the work I did on Franz Kafka for the book on him I published a year before the Dreyfus book appeared.
It's not that you can do this calculated move to try to further your career. You just follow what's in your heart, and later you look back and go, 'I was either really dumb or really smart, I can't believe I did that.'
When the Greatest Hits came out and we did that tour, I just felt I wanted to take a break, totally. Probably because, as well, I was so young when I got famous. I did album, tour, album, tour, album, tour, then I had a public nervous breakdown where I just lost tons of weight.
Where did I study? I went to P.S. 6. I went to Collegiate, Middlesex, Tufts, Juilliard.
When I did 'The Sound of Music' and 'Mary Poppins' and 'The Americanization of Emily,' all three were in the can and had not yet been released. So I was driving around having a fine time learning about how to make movies and enjoying myself enormously, and then they were released, and it was quite an assault, in a way.
I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.
I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.
When it's all said and done, I want to look back on my career and say I did numerous things.
Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan!
I did a weird thing when I was about 24. For four years I had written quite a lot of poetry, and I started reading through it and thought some of it was really good. So I burnt it all.
