I did a film about child abuse with the great producer-director Richard Donner, Radio Flyer. Again, I was replacing somebody, but Lorraine Bracco was in it, and they wanted me as the cop in the thing to fall in love with Lorraine, but I said I wouldn't. I mean, I'm a cop, and she's ignoring that her kids are being beaten up by their stepfather. And we had an argument... well, not an argument, but a discussion about it. I said, "I just don't feel right. It's like you're taking everything away from the reality of the movie. Aren't you kind of idealizing this a little bit?

There were a lot of things in it that were important at the time to me. Cutter's Way movie was very relevant. And I wanted Cutter to succeed as a vet, as a guy coming back from 'Nam, because there were so many guys like that. And there were so many other movies at the time, like Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, and The Deer Hunter, that it was really important that the movie be believable, that I come across a pissed-off vet who'd been there and comes home angry.

After The Sopranos, my mother said, "Couldn't there be some raft floating under the bridge when you jumped? Or couldn't you have a twin brother?" I said, "Yeah, if they'd wanted me that bad. But they don't."

Denzel Washington was so great at The Great Debaters, so focused and talented. That was just an honor to be cast in that, for the most part. I was fat, and I guess the casting director sold him on me. He actually said to me during the scene, "You know, I've always found that less is more," which is an expression that you've heard a million times, but it was a nice way of telling me I was overdoing it.

I did a film about child abuse with the great producer-director Richard Donner, Radio Flyer. Again, I was replacing somebody, but Lorraine Bracco was in it, and they wanted me as the cop in the thing to fall in love with Lorraine, but I said I wouldn't. I mean, I'm a cop, and she's ignoring that her kids are being beaten up by their stepfather. And we had an argument... well, not an argument, but a discussion about it. I said, "I just don't feel right. It's like you're taking everything away from the reality of the movie. Aren't you kind of idealizing this a little bit?

That show, The Sopranos put HBO on the map. So there I was - and then there I wasn't. Too bad. The same thing happened to me on Prison Break: I got the role of the governor on that, and then a handful of episodes later, I hanged myself.

Rip Torn had, like, lessons in everything he said, and one of them was, "I know that an actor can undermine anything a director tells him to do by making fun of it." And he thought that that's what I did.