The purpose that you wish to find in life, like a cure you seek, is not going to fall from the sky. ...I believe purpose is something for which one is responsible; it's not just divinely assigned.

The way life runs through everything, even the tiniest elements of nature - that makes me humble. It's the same humility that causes people at a certain time every day to get on their knees and put their foreheads on the ground in honor of something or someone.

The moment I understood this - that my Parkinson's was the one thing I wasn't going to change - I started looking at the things I could change, like the way research is funded.

I have now is whenever my kids say, "Can you look at this?" or "Can I ask you something?" or "Can you come here for a minute?" no matter what I am doing, I say yes instead of saying, "Just a sec." They never abuse the privilege, and I never once regretted it. What they took me away to do was never less important than what I was doing already.

Humility is always a good thing. It's always a good thing to be humbled by circumstances so you can then come from a sincere place to try to deal with them.

I mean, I enjoy my work as an actor. But to make a difference in people's lives through advocacy and through supporting research - that's the kind of privilege that few people will get, and it's certainly bigger than being on TV every Thursday for half an hour.

If you asked my kids to describe me, they'd go through a whole list of words before even thinking about Parkinson's. And honestly, I don't think about it that much either. I talk about it because it's there, but it's not my totality.