I remember just before going onto the soundstage, I'd look in my dressing room mirror and stretch myself to my full 5'5" or 5'6 whatever it was-to make me appear taller and to make me able to dominate all the others and to mow them down with my size.

Of course, I started as a collector. A true collector. I can remember as if it were only yesterday the heart-pounding excitement as I spread out upon the floor of my bedroom The Edward G. Robinson Collection of Rare Cigar Bands. I didn't play at collecting. No cigar anywhere was safe from me.

Nothing human is foreign to us

My father and uncles and all their friends turned their lungs black trying to satisfy my collector's zeal.

I have not collected art. Art collected me. I never found paintings. They found me. I have never even owned a work of art. They owned me.

In those days I would go for an interview and find myself competing with this other chap who would always be younger and taller, and much handsomer than I.

To my mind, the actor has this great responsability of playing another human being… it’s like taking on another person’s life and you have to do it as sincerely and honestly as you can.