I love to see actors' work. I love to surf channels late at night and accidentally run into movies I hadn't seen before. It makes me very proud of the profession.
I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.
Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.
And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.
I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.
And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.
My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.
It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.
I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.
Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I'm just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, 'Okay, I'll do that.'
