You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.
When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience.
You cannot please all of the people all of the time, and that is truer in the arts than anywhere else.
For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.
Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.
Although I am deeply grateful to a great many people, I forgo the temptation of naming them for fear that I might slight any by omission.
Audiences are audiences.
But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.
I created the role of Captain Von Trapp.
No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.
I am not a specialist but a general practitioner in the world of the arts.
Every actor wants to direct and produce, but I made a conscious decision when I was in college to understand the 'business' of 'show business.'
You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.
While we all could agree that the Zionist ideal is alive and well, there is serious doubt whether the Zionist movement can be said to be an ongoing proposition, fragmented as its components are in ideology and in practice.
As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.
In my world, history comes down to language and art.
I am first, and foremost, an actor. That's what I am. To me, a song is a mini-drama. My musical ability informs the actor as well because it gives me a sense of timing that non-musicians don't have. So, one hand washes the other.
Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival?
I refuse to do shows that are narrowly constructed, that appeal to only one sentiment. I do a lot of Jewish material in front of non-Jews and a lot of non-Jewish material in front of Jews on the simple theory that the non-Jews are entitled to a glimpse of a Jewish world and the Jews are entitled to a glimpse of the world.
John Huston was the kind of director that totally left you alone. Not every actor always does it right, every time, but most of the time he was re-directing someone. He was making tight adjustments, and not even in terms of interpretation because he knew that by the time that the character had been filmed... well, he got it right when he cast you.
'Visiting Mr. Green' is a good play. I enjoy being in it, and I have a wonderful colleague, Aidan deSalaiz, to work with. Audiences like it a lot. What's not to like?
There is no role I cannot play except a midget.
I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.
