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Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive. This university has graduated best-selling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!

For me, college wasn't a breeze. I had 8 o'clock classes, I worked from 3 to 11 at the Settlement House. On weekends, if Northwestern Bell needed me, I'd troubleshoot for them, and I had a steady girl. God!

I really enjoyed Princeton as a graduate student.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.

Dartmouth represented a great opportunity. I wanted to go to the best possible school I could go to.

By the time I got to Northwestern University in 1930, I was a football bum more interested in being an All-Star player and signing on with a pro team than going after a newspaper job.

University was a chance to people-watch and to mix with people from all various walks of life, which as an actor is a great experience because you get to observe people.

I went to Northwestern because I had gone to a really nontraditional high school. I was like, 'It'd be cool to have a traditional college experience.' Then I was like, 'Oh, but none of these people understand what's cool about me. My specialness is not appreciated in this place.'

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera.