Well when I was a kid, I asked Santa Claus for some toys. Santa Claus wrote me a letter that he lost his bag. He said he'd get back to me next year.

I think having a vision can make someone an influential man. I'm not talking about acting or anything like that, I'm talking about people I admire, whether it's a writer or a musician or a sports figure or a politician, whatever.

I trained as a theatre actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.

There's something about the Oscar that gives you sort of stripes where you feel you can dare to walk into a studio like Universal and say, "Hey guys, how about an idea of me playing the wolf man?"

Well when I was a kid, I asked Santa Claus for some toys. Santa Claus wrote me a letter that he lost his bag. He said he'd get back to me next year.

I used to play basketball and I was pretty competitive, but I was never a bad loser. I never got angry. For me it was always about doing my best and devoting myself to a challenge.

I've always played the guy with the gun and the knife. That's how many actors start out, playing the bad guy.