Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed.

There is less pressure as a character actor. It generally means that you will be acting for all of your life which is my intention. It is not my intention to just be a rich and famous person that would be pretty boring.

It's quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve and the Germans French and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer in German which I never have so I am really excited about that.

A lot of people these days are not music lovers - they just want to be famous which is a very different thing to what I grew up believing in.

If you look closely there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers in that it is filled with blank pages dark pages it has stars made of words the famous magical cube made of numbers and there is even a page which is a mirror.

When I was going for my graduate degree I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That's what I was famous for-that I had my thesis film be a feature film which was 'You're a Big Boy Now.'

I'm doing a new musical on Broadway which opens in October called 'The Boy from Oz ' where I play Peter Allen. For those of you who don't know he became first famous in America for marrying Liza Minelli.

When I'm living in the world of luxury and celebrity which is where I found myself for a large part of my life it's a walk-on part. Not a vital necessity like it is for so many people. I enjoy it but I can see right through it!

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.

It was a source of shame for my family that I was in rock and roll which is so blue-collar. It just isn't done. And I felt it too.

There is a common theme though in the stories I have told which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle.

The countries who do the best in international comparisons whether it's Finland or Japan Denmark or Singapore do well because they have professional teachers who are respected and they also have family and community which support learning.

No journalist has ever been in my house and no photographs have ever been taken of where I live. I don't parade my family out for display which is the way it will stay.

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family society and state in which we live.

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple there they revere the family.

When I go back to family reunions everybody goes 'Hey cousin! Hey Auntie!' And I'm like 'Okay I don't know you I have no idea who you are.' I am auntie and cousin for so many and even the ones in prison call me collect. And I'll be like 'Which of my family members are giving you this phone number?'

I grew up in a family of strong women and I owe any capacity I have to understand women to my mother and big sister. They taught me to respect women in a way where I've always felt a strong emotional connection to women which has also helped me in the way I approach my work as an actor.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.

That's a central part of philosophy of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals.

Whenever I have friends over we end up eating and talking and losing track of time and once in a while singing karaoke. It reminds me of the family meals we had in Russia which always lasted a very long time. That's a tradition I miss.

I'm often asked if I regret not going to Hollywood. I'm glad I didn't go because if I had I wouldn't have my extended family which is the fabric of my life. Only recently have I realised how special and unusual it is.

My grandfather's family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.

I'm thankful for all the things that this job has given me and my family. But probably the thing that I am most proud of throughout my career is that not only myself but my family and the people around me have just been regular people which we are.

For the first time ever I was taking the family on the road. We stayed with my in-laws which on life's list of experiences ranks right below sitting in a tub full of scissors.