Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

On screen, Gene Wilder could often be summed up as an accident waiting to happen, that frizzy, flyaway hair, the eyes darting this way and that and then something would set him off, Zero Mostel, say, in the movie that made Wilder a star, "The Producers."

When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.She made me believe that I could make someone laugh.

[ Zero Mostel] would tell anyone anything, not to be impolite, but he'd show that he wasn't at all afraid of however much money that person [had] or whatever title they had in a company. It didn't scare him. Mel [Brooks] was very much the same way.

I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

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