Satisfying as that 'Cabaret' role was, it is not the only thing I do. But Hollywood is somewhat limited in its perspective about what it is you do or don't do.

I loved being in the theater. It was a place of enormous excitement and happiness and safety and respect and dignity. It was a place where, if you did your job, you weren't a kid - you were a full person worthy of respect from all the adults in the company.

I was totally delighted, interested in, and amused by my stint on 'Voyager.'

Acting always affects every part of your life because it's such a solitary, lonely, and thrilling circumstance that you're taking on someone else's character and that responsibility. It's exhausting.

The theater is the place where people create ideas and send messages out, and you learn, and I think it's a fair venue for disagreement and enlightenment.

I am concerned about the musical theater, selfishly, because I love it.

I wasn't sure what it would take to make it in the theater, but despite the struggle, that was all I ever really wanted.

Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.

I'm always interested in the challenge of doing something new.

You can be taking two steps forward as an actor, but if a movie doesn't make money, you might as well be taking two steps backwards. It's all about economics.

There's a lot going on in the world that's very disturbing: rewriting the Holocaust; pseudo-historians rewriting history itself. And we're dealing with a terrorist mentality that involves whole nations.

I always sort of saw myself as different from a musician.

'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.

There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.

I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.

I came to realize, along with being attracted to girls, I had similar feelings for boys.

I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.

For me to take a role, I read a script, and I think, 'Wow, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I want to try.'

Eight times a week, I got to be a gay man, a remarkable gay man, and every night, that felt as full, as true, as passionate, and as authentic as I ever felt in my life.

I never think about my age very much. I've always lived my life the same way, full of excitement and anticipation of wonderful things and the knowledge that some not-so-wonderful things come with it.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.

There's a civility that has always been a part of me.

I used to eat Danny Kaye's food. I had his Chinese and Italian meals, and that was as good as it gets.

When you cast cross-racially, another dimension is added.

I'd like to direct something at the Public.

The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.

I really do enjoy everything I do. I just do so much.

I'm about possibilities and about surprises and the life force.

There was always this idea that I would work on Shakespeare and some of the other classics, but it never came to be.

I thought 'The Humans' was a beautiful play.

I was accepted to UCLA, but at the same time, I had a job offer at Chicago's Chez Paree nightclub. My father, being a practical man, felt I should take the job.

I'm essentially an actor. And the fact that I got away with singing and dancing for a long time is still a miracle to me.

I saw Lee J. Cobb in 'Death of a Salesman' when I was about 15, and I couldn't get up from my seat in the theater; I was so... I was weeping, and I was upset. And I find that people are still like that in a similar circumstance in a theater today, where they just can't get up. It's too heartbreaking.

That's what people forget about, is that when things are very, very powerful in a sad way, they have that possibility of also being over-the-top, hysterically funny.

Whenever I get to work with great actors, I'm happy.

I'm crazy about surprises. I love chance.

A lot of people have problems thinking of you doing more than one thing. If you do one thing, then you couldn't possibly do another thing well. Of course, we know that's not so.

If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I'll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.

It's hard to act with just your jaw.

We all can relate to people's weaknesses. We might put up a facade that everything is perfect but none of us are. When we see that weakness in somebody else, we understand or give ourselves a little bit of leeway.

I would like to be able to do as many of my own stunts where I can.

I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.

I went to high school in Texas for one year, my senior year. My parents wanted me to get out of Stockholm because I was running with the wrong crew. They wanted me to get back to my roots.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

Being an actor in movies is a lot about the power of your imagination and making the circumstance real to you so the audience will feel that it's real.

In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.

For somebody in my neighborhood to aspire or revere a person from the upper class, that is the most ugly and pathetic behavior you could exhibit.

I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Sweden, which, during my teens, gentrified and is now completely middle class and even upper middle class.

We're all a big hippie family so I got five sisters and a bunch of different mothers. Not really, but my sisters' mothers are all good friends with my mother. We're a big family, 25 people.

In most scripts, one or two characters have a lot of colors.