I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn't want to do movies that much. I found they took a lot out of you and they were exhausting for me in a lot of ways.
I don't think actors should ever expect to get a role, because the disappointment is too great. You've got to think of things as an opportunity. An audition's an opportunity to have an audience.
Forget the career, do the work. If you feel what you are doing is on line and you're going someplace and you have a vision and you stay with it, eventually things will happen.
The interesting thing about this is I don't know what my vision [ in Salome the play and Salomaybe] is yet about. I'm sensing something and I'm going along with it. It reminds me of a painting, the way Jackson Pollack painted - Jackson Pollack, the great, great artist.
Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.
My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.
I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life. If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I'm an artist, I hate saying that.
A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.
At this point in my career, I don't have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things. My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.
There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. At one point he took the robes he was wearing and just started flipping them up in the air, out of nowhere. And later, an actor said to him, "What was that, George, what were you doing?" And he said, "They were sleeping." You're always trying to catch them.