I was constantly told and challenged to live my life as a warrior. As a warrior, you assume responsibility for yourself. The warrior humbles himself. And the warrior learns the power of giving.
A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.
I developed the concept of the Happy Warrior as a rallying cry for those of us who want to restore America to its great foundational principles: individual freedom, personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, and economic liberty.
I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'
I want to try to apply my abilities sometimes to make families happy, so I have to make movies at a venue that are not gratuitously violent, that are not using bullets and bloodshed, but are using things like magic and fantasy and enchantment and the imagination. To me that's just all positive stuff. But I am eclectic and I still like to make movies for the midnight audience as well.
I certainly would never overstep my bounds and make suggestions to a director. As an actor I'm trying to fit to the best of my abilities within the director's vision, and trying to find some happy rapport where we can both bring something to it that's fresh. Usually I've been lucky in working with directors who have trusted my instincts.
I know there's been a lot that's been said about animated voice work, as though it's 'you can do this in your jeans and there's no camera and no pressure there. It's no big deal. It's easy.' The truth is, it's really a great test: how deep is your ability is to access your imagination?