People will go into an audition and a casting situation, and they'll see someone across the room that's perhaps slightly famous, or famous, and they think, 'Oh God, I'm not gonna get the part.'

I really love being a character actor.

I have a very hard time with confrontation in my own life, and I end up being way too nice.

The thing about living in Los Angeles and doing a lot of movies is that you get to go to a lot of premieres, and, regardless of whether or not you're a celebrity, you still get to walk down the red carpet and then have everyone sort of screaming your name. The pictures never get printed anywhere, but they are nonetheless taking your picture.

When I was growing up, I kept hoping that I wasn't really gay because I wanted to have children. I went through a long, tortured period, so the fact that I have been able to be true to myself and have a family has been the nicest surprise of my adulthood.

I've still got family members living below the poverty line in New York.

Convention serves a purpose: It gives life meaning, and without it, one is in a constant existential crisis. If you don't have the imposition of family to remind you of what is at stake, something else will.

As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.