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Perhaps because my background is theatrical, I have a great affinity with the classics. Hamlet has always been a character of great interest to me and a character I would really love to play. Or a character in a Tennessee Williams play, maybe Tom in 'The Glass Menagerie.'

Doing Shakespeare in the Park has always been a dream. Everyone else says Hamlet, but I want to play Romeo.

I think Mercutio in 'Romeo and Juliet' would be my favorite role. I've never played it, but I would love to do it.

I want to be known as 'The Big Shakespeare.' It was Shakespeare that said, 'Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.'

I would have played any character in an Alexander Payne movie.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

I started off as an actor thinking that I would be this Romeo, this dashing leading man. It turns out that I'm a character actor.

I would love to play Henry IV, Henry V, and Hamlet.

You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.

I'd like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be.