My parents were Hungarian immigrants; my father was a tailor and we lived in the back of a tailor store. And that was my first inkling of what it was like to be raised in America. It had a profound effect on me - I saw different people coming in all the time with different attitudes and I liked it. And as I grew older, I found that I was able to use something inside of me to get some sympathy if I wanted it. I used to shine shoes, and I would use a waif-like look. I'd get a dime and I'd be as happy as could be.

Now I'm a painter. That was another opportunity I was able to pursue, I've been painting all my life, now it's become a second career because of my success in the movies.

The movie business is very twisted, out of site, out of mind, you know.

It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.

Acting is something that we all practice at some time in our lives. We're different people to our mothers, fathers, our friends, people that we hung out together with, people that didn't like us or we didn't like them. We readjust ourselves.

I feel strongly that we, all of us, are brothers and sisters, and nothing interferes with that except our education, our background, where we grew up and how we should do it. If you eliminated all those negatives and gave us an open view of what life would be like, it would be different.

Painting is much more than therapy to me its a way of life.