Were there certain things that I didn't feel were dignified enough to make it into the movie? Yeah.

A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay.

The thing about New York is you can leave your house without a plan and find the day. You can't do that in Los Angeles. You need to get in your car, all this, you can't just drive around like a lunatic. In New York, you can literally walk outside, and wind up anywhere.

Socially, hip-hop has done more for racial camaraderie in this country than any one thing. 'Cause guys like me, my kids - everyone under 45 either grew up loving hip-hop or hating hip-hop, but everyone under 45 grew up very aware of hip-hop. So when you're a white kid and you're listening to this music and you're being exposed to it every day on MTV, black people become less frightening. This is just a reality. What hip-hop has done bringing people together is enormous.

I'm identified as a New York actor, I sound like I'm from New York, and I couldn't be more proud of it.

When I was a kid, my first favorite song was probably Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side."

I'm a New York person. I've never gone out of the way to speak to the press to change my persona - I probably should have. It's too late now. But when I first started I was like, "I'm gonna stay this way. I'm gonna be this way," and I continued to. I probably should have sugarcoated it like, "This is not really the way I am - I'm an actor."