I like people who are minimalist with their words. Jack Nicholson thinks a lot then says something, and it's always spot on. Nelson Mandela is the same.
It must be very strange to live in the world of Willie Nelson or Bruce Springsteen or Pearl Jam. I don't know what kind of handle they have on their own loss of talent.
After 'Homeland,' I was offered a lot of very authoritarian, square, angry boss types, but I wanted to do something different. Casting directors are surprised when they look at my CV and see all the work I've done, from Shakespeare to playing Nelson Mandela.
I was obsessed with Nelson Mandela. I had big posters of him in my bedroom and he became my proxy father figure. He was in jail, so I could project all sorts of things about what he would say to me.
Ricky Nelson... I couldn't believe it when he died. He was a great rock star.
I laughed at Willie Nelson, wondering why he spends all his life on that tour bus. And I look at myself, and I'm sitting in airplanes half the time.
The leaders who we admire who have been able to bring great change in the past - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela - they're all inspirational religious leaders and smart tacticians. It would be nice to find the Muslim Gandhi, wouldn't it?
Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.
It's a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.
I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive - the power is in love and forgiveness.
