Growing up in the South, I was raised to be a Negro boy. I was acutely aware how other people perceived me, and that informed my behavior. That worked for a period of time, but it could also be suffocating.

1985 - That was my time in New York, and I have such poetic, fond memories.

The rules I sort of live by for my theater career, which I hope to live for my film career, is that if there's something that intrigues me or fascinates me, or I don't know how to do it, then I should do it.

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

During war time, when people were injured, I was really frustrated I did not become a doctor. It's painful not being able to save people, witnessing their pain.

I think that American women are further along than any other women in the world. But you can't have peace in a world in which some women or some men or some nations are at different stages of development. There is so much work to be done.

You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.

I often joke that I could write 'War and Peace' and make it sound like Geri Halliwell wrote it.