I like playing roulette, I like dice. I grew up with gamblers.

I thought that if no one was going to give me a great part - and it was very difficult to break into film, obviously - then I'd write one myself.

The key is you have to keep doing the right thing. Do the right thing and stay around long enough, and you'll keep getting parts. And if you don't, you write your own parts, which I'm lucky to do. It's like anything else: you get hot, you get cold, then you get hot again. You just keep working.

The way I pick movies is, first, if the script is any good. Then, if the script is good, who else is in it, the director, the producer, all that. If you have all that, there's a chance the movie will be great. If the script isn't right, or the director or cast isn't right, you've got no shot in hell.

I'm very proud of being Italian-American, but people don't realize that the mafia is just this aberration. The real community is built on the working man, the guy who's the cop, the fireman, the truck driver, the bus driver.

Mental violence is as bad as physical violence. You don't see that very often in movies, so it was a good subject to tackle.

Italian-Americans are not the Mafia.