Karl Malden was quite a mentor. He taught me things he had learned from being in front of a camera so long.

A lot of actors in my age bracket look at being still standing as pretty good.

If you're onstage and you're improvising and nothing's happening, people are racing for the door. But the director can go shopping later and pick up pieces and moments and insert them.

Then, at some point, you get identified with certain things.

You make the choice. You look at each scene and you make sure that this is not a person deceiving people.

I look at it scene-by-scene. Whether it's a historical character or not, whatever, on the page is one thing and delving into the history or somebody is one thing, but making something work for an audience in front of a camera is another exercise and you bring whatever authenticity you can to it.

The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more.