I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.

My father told me, "Don't do anything that would bring shame to the family." I was always mindful of that. When I told him I wanted to pursue a career as an actor, my father said, "Look at what you see on television at the movies, is that what you want to be doing? Do you want to make a life out of that?" And I said, "Daddy, I'm going to change it".

Good grief. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, and at one another, in good spirit and without malice, then what fun can be left? If we must withhold all ribbing in the name of protecting everyone’s feelings, then we truly are a toothless society. We will reach what I call “the lowest common denominator of butthurt.

I'm a civic busybody and I've been blessed with an active career.

I had a really unusual, remarkably unusual father because he, in our family, was the one that suffered the most. He was the one that explained American democracy to me. He said, ‘Our democracy is a people’s democracy and it can be as great as people can be, and it can be great… but we are also fallible human beings.’

I think we learn more from those times in our history where we stumbled as a democracy than we learn from the glorious chapters.

I'm an anglophile. I visit England regularly, sometimes three or four times a year, at least once a year.