When I showed up at UH, my hair was past my waist. I had a goatee. I wasn't a theater geek; I wasn't an actor. But Cecil Pickett molded me and taught me.

I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.

I was a theater geek, and I was a surly cheerleader, and that's really kind of a contradiction.

In Mexico, theater is very underground, so if you're a theater actor it's very difficult to make a living. But it's also a very beautiful pathway to knowledge and to an open education.

Something in me was responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there.

As a theater actor I always wondered, 'Is there a place for me in Hollywood?'