I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing.
There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.
Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.
I suppose my look, the way I play - you combine all that sort of stuff and that makes people interested in what I actually do. So then, when off-the-field stuff happens... I suppose it's one of those cocktail mixes.
With just about every player in Australia, his whole goal and ambition is to play for Australia. That's why they're playing first class cricket. It's just a different attitude.
My life was falling apart and then to come out and play and have my best ever - 40 wickets, 250 runs... But the only reason I could do that was because of the way I thought and I think I'm pretty strong mentally. I think I am anyway, pretty strong to get over whatever it is.
The reason why I have lost weight is that I looked at the international schedule and thought that I wanted to play for another two years. It is a very hectic schedule and if I want to get through that then I have to be in the best shape that I can.
However, most of my part, I play a pediatrician, and most of my role had to do with being in another place, staying at the hospital and trying to save kids and stay until people could come. So, it was more based on reality.
One of the advantages of appearing in such a play is that you begin to understand it properly, I feel Ophelia's tragedy was that she had been so used by everybody and felt that she bore a great burden of guilt.
In this play we're dealing with relative truths - who's lying, who's telling the truth. But underneath that, Ed and I have hit this deeper level of intimacy between old friends that comes out in the play.
As an actor, it's fun to play guys who aren't just locked into a male pattern, but a lot of guys you're asked to play are fairly macho and have a certain rigid standard they're living by.
Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.
The U.S. along with China, Japan, South Korea and Russia has an important role to play in containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and exerting all the influence we can possibly exert.
