I Have A Very Low Regard For

In 1973, I Was Shown A Graphic Of How Dependent The United States Was On Nonrenewable Resources Like Oil And Coal And That Little Was Being Done To Change That. It Seemed Irrefutable That We Needed A Change In Direction Or We'd Be Paying A Huge Price Down The Road. That's When I Made A Commitment To Become A Political Activist.

When I Started, I Was An Artist; I Wanted To Be An Artist. I Became An Actor Almost By Accident. I Acted For Fifteen Years And Tried To Produce. I Looked For Stories That Were The Story Beneath The Story That You Thought You Knew, Like 'the Candidate'.

I Was Raised In California During The Second World War And Into The '50s And Everything Was Fine, Everything Was Great. The Sun Always Shone, Everybody Looked Healthy And Wore Ties And Smoked In Restaurants, And There Were Cars For Everybody - Except Us, Because I Came From A Lower Class Neighbourhood. But [in France] I Realised There Was A Different Point Of View, So When I Came Back To America A Year And A Half Later I Was Much More Focused On My Own Country Culturally And Politically.

That's Another Thing That's Depressing: Certain Attitudes In Congress. They Assume That You're Dumb; They Can Take Advantage Of You Being Dumb. I Find That Offensive. It Insults Our Intelligence. They're Playing Us For Dumb And They're Being Dumb In Doing It. But I Believe That's Gonna Change. I Think Those People, The Mcconnells, Are Not Helping Us At All. They're Taking Us Backward In Time.

The Measure Of Our Success Will Be The Condition On Which We Leave The World For The Next Generation.