I know it affected me when I saw certain actors growing up. I had a drama teacher that would take us to see plays in New York, and it was seeing James Earl Jones and Raul Julia - I mean, this guy comes from the place my mother comes from. He's doing Shakespeare right now, and it doesn't seem to matter that he has an accent.

Growing up in New York, we lived all around the city depending on our economic circumstance. I also lived in Puerto Rico for a number of years.

When I sit down and sign up for something, I vet where the people are coming from.

California has been very good to me in terms of the professional arena.

I went to a vocational high school, which is where they basically train you to go out and dig ditches. You gotta learn a trade. Well, why do you gotta learn a trade? Because you're not smart enough to go to college. That was the underlying gist of it.

For me, Domhnall is an acting teacher as much as anything. If I turn out to be half the actor he is, I'll be happy.

I grew up the son of an acting teacher, so I was kind of introduced to all of these various methods early... I've never been really good at articulating how, what that process is in the way that Stanislavsky could.

The poem 'What Teachers Make' is not without its detractors. This one person wrote to me and said: 'Gee, Mr. Mali. You don't possibly have a teacher-God complex, do you?' And that was the first time I'd ever heard of that expression. So, yeah, I'm sure I have a teacher-God complex.