It comes down to something really simple: Can I visualize myself playing those scenes? If that happens, then I know that I will probably end up doing it.

The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part's not that great.

I have made decisions based from purely an actor's point of view.

I went to the University of Minnesota to study art. I left the university to come to New York and live in Soho. I got involved with like a small kind of like experimental theater-mime company and we discovered that Étienne Decroux, a great mime, was still teaching in Paris so I went to study with him for several years.

There was a period of time when I was very political, when I was at the university. It was like the late '60s, early '70s and I was a dissident like everybody else I guess. Now I follow it but there's nothing that really grabs me. The most fascinating thing to me right now is China.

I have always followed the most passionate course.

Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable.