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We didn't have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free.

We had every kind of audience you could name. Young, old, not-so-old, some older than old, some younger than young: they were there, they were there! There was everything.

I started in the club route. I did the alternative scene later on. When I lived in New York, I did the Luna Lounge and stuff, where Janeane Garofalo and David Cross and all those guys worked out of, but I came from a comedy club background. I'm proud of that background. I'm one of the people that really crossed over and did both.

In our day we went from - we went into saloons. We couldn't cross over like you can today, get a television series and all of a sudden you're a major movie star, you know.

I was influenced a lot by those around me - there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields.

I come from a very, very small town. There were no other actors around. I never met any actors. A lot of those times when I'd be out in the sheds with my dad, I'd step outside, and there's just nothing out there but thousands of acres, forty thousand sheep, and miles of nothing. And so my mind would just wonder about what else was out there.

Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody - Paris for me was a Mecca.

When I owned the theater, I had the Glen Miller Orchestra. I had 20 girls singing and dancing. I had a cast of characters. It was a big group production, as well as ushers, ticket takers.

I was born into a world where a lot of people who came to the house were performers.

Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity.