I wanted to be a baseball player, naturally, but I wasn't good enough. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I just had a kind of energy, I was a fairly happy kid.

"To be or not to be is" [by William Shakespeare] beyond anything I can comprehend. I understand it on a superficial level, but the depth of it just boggles my mind. I think it's probably the greatest of all speeches ever written.

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.

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express 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 is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away. They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless. I've been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That's the stuff my dreams are made of.