I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.

Comedy today is not what it was years ago. It's always changing, in particular to female comics. No longer are certain subjects considered to be a male preserve. Women can talk about sexuality and their bodily functions and it can be very, very entertaining. It's changed the impact of comedy acting.

Tom Hanks knows the name of all the episodes.

This is a call to action—not an action that will make things better in six months’ time or a year’s time, but action that might save someone’s life and someone’s future this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning.

One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.

I've been an activist all my life. And always a liberal activist, for the simple reason that it is on the liberal left that you find the true recognition for the need for fairness in society. I'm not saying equality, because that you can never achieve, because equality is based on such complex criteria. But fairness is another issue.

I am not the archetypal leading man. This is mainly for one reason: as you may have noticed, I have no hair.