The only tool we have as artists is selectivity. If you're a painter, you select the color, the lines, how severe they should be. As an actor you develop how angry you should be. You select how angry you should be. You listen to the other actor and then you react. In film, sometimes the other actor isn't even there. You have to play the scene. What I do is I call on my experience on the stage. I play the scene and I hope that I reach a certain level of integrity because that's what I learned on the stage.

For 50 years, acting was the reason I got up in the morning.

We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80.

Poverty can teach lessons that privilege cannot.

Some days when I start to talk, my voice isnt strong. But then it warms up.

Suddenly it was gone. I'd lost more than my voice and my career. I'd lost my best friend.

Acting became my best friend. When I auditioned to get into college, the teacher said you belong here, Mr. Klugman, and to hear that word belong - I never belonged anywhere before - and suddenly I belonged in acting and it was so comfortable and I loved it.