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 found that speaking live to people, young people, about what I liked and what had been happening to me was very good for me. I was quite overtaken by success and fame. I was one of those types who responded to it in a negative way. It was not easy.

We were doing Scarface many years ago...and I remember having my coffee and looking at the beach, the surf, and I saw a hundred people looking out into the ocean. I thought, what's going on? Did some whale get washed up to shore? So I stood up on the table to see what it was, and it was the director, Brian De Palma, standing there alone by the surf and they were all waiting for him. And I never forgot that because it represented to me what a director is, what a director does.

Responsibilities are relative. My responsibility is to a character in a script, to a part I'm playing.

All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.

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.