I've played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.

I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.

I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.

Now, why is it that most of us can talk openly about the illnesses of our bodies, but when it comes to our brain and illnesses of the mind we clam up and because we clam up, people with emotional disorders feel ashamed, stigmatized, and don't seek the help that can make the difference.

I think the election of [Barack] Obama was a great step to prove to the world that we believe that all men were created equal. I think it will show that we have humility.

With John Wayne, we argued all the time and we made four pictures.

When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy's questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.