Yeah, I know I'm ugly... I said to a bartender, 'Make me a zombie.' He said 'God beat me to it.'
People called me a hoodlum and a thug. But they didn't tell you I was a carpenter, an architect, a stand-up comic - even a bartender. And a barbecue cook. But they didn't tell you that.
My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.
My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.
Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist - whatever.
I was an amazing bartender and a great waiter. I think, in a way, that was my acting school.
I spent a lot of time listening to people. But it's also true that I liked details and listening to people when I was a bartender and when I was a waitress and probably when I was a babysitter as well. I suspect that's part of what drew me to psychotherapy rather than the other way around.
I studied international relations and economics at the University of Virginia. I paid my way by working as a bartender in the summer and at three part-time jobs during the year.
The supporting thing can be harder to pop in and out of. The hardest thing is the people who have to come in and play, say, the bartender for a day - that's a lot harder than playing the lead role. You have to pop in and get it right. It's a lot of pressure to just pop in there and fit in and find your footing really fast.
I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.