I consider myself a very lucky man indeed.

My parents moved to American Samoa when I was three or four years old. My dad was principal of a high school there. It was idyllic for a kid. I had a whole island for a backyard. I lived there until I was eight years old and we moved to Santa Barbara.

If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini.

Things happen to everybody in the course of a lifetime. Relationships end, people die, tragedy befalls everyone. So everyone has this wealth of experience, and the older you are the more you have to draw on.

I try to read all news sources - not just CNN or FOX, but worldwide papers and journals, to get opinions from every end of the spectrum - and then I like to try to find out the cut and dried facts - and go from there.

It just seems to me that the world's kind of a mess, and the more messy it gets, the more interested I am in escapist fare. Having a good time is something that isn't about the war in Iraq or the Asian flu or the Kyoto protocol - things that are horribly depressing to consider in our real lives. I'm eager to get away from them.

Look, I'm an actor, I don't profess to understand much of anything