And if you can channel the truth of your own experience onto the stage, that's what the audience wants to see.

I did my first apprenticeship when I was 15, then joined the union when I was 17. I worked every summer in high school and college.

When I first began acting, I assumed an intellectual responsibility attached to my profession, which I had accepted for a long time. My father taught me that an actor had to have a social and political conscience, and that the work that he does has to reflect from that.

What can I do today to take a step forward?

You should have a dream and absolutely go for it. Don't let anybody say you can't do it.

I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do.

Nothing of any consequence happens unless people get behind an idea. It begins with an individual and they share the idea with more individuals-and eventually it becomes a movement.