The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.

I was dissatisfied just being an actor.

I like to use all of myself, and acting wasn't doing that.

And I love doing my own projects; that's what I've always wanted to do.

A dream that you don't fight for can haunt you for the rest of your life.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

Early in my career, people wanted to pigeonhole me as the bad guy because I'm of Italian-American descent, which they often were when I started out. You have to fight against it. One of the things that helps is the ability to do comedy.