You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.

I am first, and foremost, an actor. That's what I am. To me, a song is a mini-drama. My musical ability informs the actor as well because it gives me a sense of timing that non-musicians don't have. So, one hand washes the other.

I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.

But there is a difference here: When Jewish children are murdered, Arabs celebrate the deed. The death of an Arab child is no cause for celebration in Israel.

No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.

One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.

If I have one vanity wish, it would be to direct. It's the only thing I haven't done yet that I would like to.