I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that.

The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that's all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.

Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.

You say the character [of Leo Bloom] was meek and insecure, and you could've been describing me as well. I was a very shy person in those days, and working with Zero [Mostel], who was bigger than life, helped me grow. Zero was a strong influence on me.

I want to be an actor, maybe a comic actor but a real actor.

I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her's. I didn't think I had the right.