When I was growing up, it was Clint Eastwood, it was Harrison Ford and Steve McQueen - these guys were tough. They were leading men, but they were also tough and physical.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
James Cagney, Steve McQueen, I loved all those guys. I grew up loving the movies but had no desire to be in them.
Harrison Ford... I love him. He's a man's man.
Clint Eastwood. Here's a guy who's been involved in so many movies, lots of them masterpieces, and now he's a director. I just like everything I know about him. He's very decisive, he makes up his mind real quick.
I identify with the Clint Eastwoods and Harrison Fords. Those are my heroes.
When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.
Dirty Harry, for example. Clint Eastwood was not a rogue cop. He was a maverick cop, but he was a good guy.
When I was coming up, everybody wanted to be Tom Hanks. There was always Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - they were the heavily dramatic stuff. I always had a foot in both camps. The hardest thing was to resist the advice to be like someone else. It took me a while to figure that out.
I came out of high school, where my heroes were, like, Michael Jordan and a lot of local rugby players - and on the movie front, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
The big stars I felt a kinship with were never the romantic leads. It wasn't Steve McQueen or Robert Redford - it was people like Walter Matthau and Anthony Quinn. My big hero was Tommy Cooper.
The guys I grew up with, my cinematic heroes, have always been men of few words, but of action. Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach.