I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.

I trained as an actor with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman, and those guys set a very high bar.

The year I got into The Actors Studio, Steve McQueen and I were the only two accepted that whole year.

They were like little palaces: all rococo or art deco. You'd walk in off those hot streets into a nice, air-cooled theater, and you'd spend all day watching Cagney or Jimmy Stewart. It cost all of 17 cents.

I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.

I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.