My mother was an actress and my voice teacher an incredible voice teacher. My biological father is an actor and my stepfather who raised me along with my mother is a psychotherapist. I was always supported in creative ventures.

I went whole hog at the actor's lifestyle - really embraced it. I had by then known how much I loved acting already because I discovered acting from a teacher in the seminary - that's the first place I ever did it in the seminary.

I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first I wanted to work in the theatre but there was something about the ambience of film especially American films that always attracted me.

If I wasn't an actor I'd be a teacher a history teacher. After all teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor in a way. It takes a great deal to get and hold a class.

The fact of the matter is that when there are feelings involved and you like someone it doesn't matter if you're an actor a teacher a doctor a lawyer a receptionist - you can't really help it when you have feelings for someone.

It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!

Ask everyone whether they're an actor or a doctor or a teacher or whatever is entitled to his or her opinion. But unfortunately because actors are in the public eye whether we want it or not sometimes our opinions carry more weight or influence than they deserve.

I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner my acting teacher told us. When you create a character it's like making a chair except instead of making someting out of wood you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

Actors who are lovers in real life are often incapable if playing the part of lovers to an audience. It is equally true that sympathy between actors who are not lovers may create a temporary emotion that is perfectly sincere.

I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.

Indeed I regard the enduring support which I have received over the years from all sections of the community in Ballymena as being more than sufficient recognition for any success which I may have achieved as an actor.

I'm an eternal realist and the success rate for being an actor is pretty low.

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

Honesty is the most single most important factor having a direct bearing on the final success of an individual corporation or product.

The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent actor director producer leading man and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude but true.

Part of my strength as an actor comes from what I've learned all these years: when you play a villain you try to get the light touches when you play a hero you try to get in some of the warts.

My strength as an actor is in the theater - I know that about myself. Some actors get onstage and vanish but I'm much better there than I am on screen.

I love to sing and I do think that my strength as a singer is... I think I have a voice that is certainly sufficient under most any circumstances... but I think my strength is that I really am an actor and I really do have to own what I am saying.

I know what my limitations are as an actor but my strength is putting myself into a well-written part. When I get in trouble is when I have to fix it or when I have to carry it on personality.

A coach once told me there are four factors that determine a players' performance: his tactical awareness his physical condition his technical ability and his mental strength.

The biological factors underlying race differences in sports have consequences for educational achievement crime and sexual behavior.

Well if I hadn't have been an actor I would have gone on to play college sports.

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky most little boys were trying to get into sports and it was very competitive so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.