Learning is about much more than science and math. Doing theater, music, and art in school really helps children's minds grow because they're using different parts of their brains. Parents who care should insist on that.

When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.

One of the reasons why I love to do Shakespeare is that this great artist was able to talk to a wide variety of audiences. He could do the bawdy plays and the humor and the clowns-as you know, because you're a wonderful Stephano-that speaks to the populace, the masses, the groundlings, whatever.

The idea that all violence in movies is okay simply because it happens is bull. Directors and writers have a responsibility.

Going to the Far East was my first eye-opener to a world vastly different from my own. Then when I was 16 I lived in Paris for a year and studied mime. At 21 I went to Indonesia. I had planned to go for three months, but I stayed four years. I just got lost in the culture.

But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.

You just have to throw fear out the window. If there's anything that's going to hold you back, it's fear.