What we consider typical of the male is a question I ask myself quite often - it's relevant to my life as an actor and as a man.

I thought to myself, there's a man who gave up his life to serve others - to touch people in that way is probably the greatest thing you can do as a human being.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

I'm the man who sits behind a table and tells true stories from his life. I'm also an actor. I was trained as an actor at Emerson College, and I use that training to play myself.

I'm quite an independent person, and I had to be. As a boy and growing into a young man I had to look out for myself. And now I'm very family-oriented. It's a big priority in my life.

I just tried to create a life for myself that's full of fun and fantasy and things that equal laughter. My life's been cartoons and comedy and acting, and it's just been a fun life, man.

I am an 'other.' As a queer, biracial man who occupies and embodies many different intersections of 'otherness,' I've spent my entire life seeking reflections of myself in the world around me to connect and relate to.

I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point.

People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer's creation.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won't let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, 'Here I am. This is me.' I feel there's something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

I was never one who sought to make the small man tall by cutting off the legs of a giant. I wanted to drag no man down to my size. Only to preserve a way of life which might make it possible for me, one day, to elevate myself until I at least partly matched his size.

As an actor, I'm allowed - encouraged! - to explore emotions that have been basically unacceptable in my life. I have a huge well of emotional stuff, and once I give myself permission as an actor, it all comes to the surface. But I'll be damned if I can give myself permission to bring it out as a man.

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