I'm an infant with Shakespeare; I'm kind of learning how to walk. I am trying to decipher the code, you know? I do my research. And I get a clear understanding of what the language is. It is a tremendous process I have to go through as I am sure all actors do, finding the gems hidden in his language.

Even here in America, people are fighting for civil rights 45 years after the civil rights movement.

I live in New York City. Since 1983, this is my home. It is my heart, it is my home, and it is the city that I love. I enjoy many places and many opportunities, but I absolutely adore New York City.

I have to be invested spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically to do theater. I can't do it to make a living. I have four kids, a couple of grandkids, and two mortgages.

My father was a construction worker most of his life. My mother, when she came from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to the United States, never had a chance to go to college either and became a clerical worker. But they did nothing but build this country.

When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me.

Their educations ended with high school - my father going to work as a clerk and then salesman in a company dealing in printing and stationary, and my mother working as a secretary and then bookkeeper in a firm of wool merchants.

I identify my humour quotient with that of my father's. He used to love British comedies. Also, when it comes to fitness, my father was a sportsman and I too was into sports as a child.