My dad was my hero when I was a young boy. And then it's a toss-up between Han Solo, the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team, and Marlon Brando.
I'd like to win an Oscar and then refuse it so I can protest the way they've treated Marlon Brando.
I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up.
Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando.
The first time I met Brando was on a street corner. I was 14. He was walking down the street, and I saw him coming, and I thought, 'It's Marlon Brando.' And he was wearing what turned out to be his outfit from 'On the Waterfront,' because he was shooting.
Marlon Brando changed everything for actors. After him, everyone wanted to be Marlon. No one wanted to be a type: they all wanted to display versatility in every role.
Marlon Brando came up to me many, many years ago. He wanted me to do a little doodle for him on the back of an airline ticket.
I mean, the actors that I admired were Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, an actress named Barbara Harris. And Greta Garbo. They were great actors.
When I was in high school in the '50s you were supposed to be an Elvis Presley, a James Dean, a Marlon Brando or a Kingston Trio type in a button-down shirt headed for the fraternities at Stanford or Cal.
As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn't sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can't shake, so it's not phony anymore.
