Miss Goodblatt would call on me to read. She said I had a talent. So on a whim, I auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan.

I find it so strange that I throw people off-center.

Really, if you get in the ring and box with someone for real, I don't think it is a sport. As far as professional fighters, you are literally putting your life on the line.

I graduated on a Friday. By Monday, I was doing Shakespeare in the Park.

I try to base my life on the principles of Christ. I try to raise my family on the principles of Christ. I don't know if that makes me religious.

I've always been interested in cross-cultural exchange with the youth.

People often think I've played the villain more times than I have.

I spent three days with Don King, and I interviewed 45 people. I studied his speech, his mannerisms. He invited me to a couple of fights, and I watched him.

I don't need dialogue to convey emotion or thoughts to my audience.

How do you cut off the human side and just maintain being professional? So what I've done is I've incorporated that with Kojak - there's times when he allows the human condition, the human experience, to integrate into him as a professional.

I like to say that I didn't choose acting - acting chose me.

I saw how, when my brother smoked reefer, it made my mother cry. He was 16 at the time. And I saw that she broke down and cried. I never wanted to hurt my mother, so I kept away from drugs.

My brother and I slept on the couch. I didn't get my own room until I was in college. We didn't even have a telephone until I was in college.

I grew up in Harlem in New York, very rough, urban environment, and so what I found is that, if I can have kids travel to different places, countries, areas, it can expand their minds.

God is putting me in a position to affect people.

I do fish, and as a matter of fact, I used to do a lot of deep sea fishing, but as far as going into the water, I don't go out deep into the water.

I'm the spokesman for ADT, and ADT, brother, pays better than most actors make on film.

'Mission: Impossible' is fun. But for myself as an artist, I'm really more concerned with the human condition, the human experience, especially from an African American point of view.

My dogs are family dogs.

I really feel that there are things in the ocean that we have no idea about.

The training at Juilliard School is classical training, and it really makes one very versatile.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, 'I did not choose acting; acting chose me.' I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football.

The more versatile you make yourself, the more work you get. Training makes you more versatile and ultimately gets you more work. Julliard taught me that.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

I saw that crime pays, but I never got involved in crime.

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.

I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, but I didn't really know I was a deprived, poverty-stricken child until the media made me aware of it.

All I want and all I even ask of people in Hollywood is look, just be honest with me. Please don't lie to me. Whatever the situation is, be honest with me.

I don't know if I hadn't grown up poor, and in the neighborhood I did, if I would have had that much to bring to my art form. I call upon my past with characters.

When I think of the trials and tribulations that black men go through in America and that black artists went through, I feel very privileged.