Radio, newspapers, they were normal parts of my life. In those days, you had to go somewhere to watch television and leave something to see it.

When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.

The big moment for me was making 'All the President's Men'. It was not about Watergate or President Nixon. I wanted to focus on something I thought not many people knew about: How do journalists get the story?

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings a certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

In 1973, I was shown a graphic of how dependent the United States was on nonrenewable resources like oil and coal and that little was being done to change that. It seemed irrefutable that we needed a change in direction or we'd be paying a huge price down the road. That's when I made a commitment to become a political activist.

Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together.

I'm always moving forward and trying new things.