When I got back home from Florida, I bumped into some friends of mine – funny, funny guys who said, ‘Hey, John, we just signed up at the American Academy to become actors, man! Come with us – the school is packed with girls!’ So I went home to ask my family for some loot. I went to my father and said, ‘I don’t want to go to college. I want to be an actor and go to this school.’ That was a lie, of course; I just wanted to be near all those girls. My mother said, ‘An actor?!’ But my father – he was very disappointed about my leaving college – said, ‘At least it’s something, let him be something!’

Then he gave me this very solemn look and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m really going to get it.’ And he said, ‘That’s a very noble thing to do. Do you know what kind of responsibility that is? You are going to be representing the lives of human beings. You will speak for all the people who have no voice.’