I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well.

But the acting process - create a human being - was real, not only to the audience, but real to me.

Because we had to convince the scientific members of Transylvania that with the procedure I was using on the creature, Dr. Frankenstein could be taught to be a civilized human being, what I called a man about town. Instead of a monster who's going to kill their children, it was someone who could sing and dance.

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

I love acting, especially if it's a fantasy of some kind, where it's not just realistic, it's not naturalism.

I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.

In fact, [Gene Wilder] had made a hysteric seem considerably less funny in his film debut as a terrified undertaker in "Bonnie And Clyde." And neurotics soon became his stock-in-trade, whether he was playing the weird title character in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory..."