I was 20 years old. I had moved to Los Angeles from Columbus, Ohio. I was working as a piano salesman - a terrible piano salesman. I couldn't sell them. I could demonstrate them, but people wouldn't buy them from me.
I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old 'cause my folks tried to get me away from the gramophone. And I just - I lived for music since I could think. And they got me piano lessons. So by the time I was 13, I was quite an accomplished piano player and musician.
I was 20 when I moved to Los Angeles. I went on probably 600 commercial auditions and couldn't book any of them.
Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley.
I have been working since I was 20, and I'm 38. I actually once averaged out what I had made over my professional life. I think I could have made that much as a waiter or an insurance salesman. You know, I spent so many years in my 20's making $10,000 a year.
I had an acting teacher tell me once that if you're playing a car salesman, you don't want to be an OK car salesman, you want to play the best car salesman.
I moved to Los Angeles. My parents were not on board with that, and so I had to get a lot of different jobs. One of them was working for a man in Hollywood who had a weekly poker game.
For me, the keyboard is always an additional sound to the piano. Piano is the main instrument; I can't go anywhere without acoustic piano. It's been my best friend since I was 6 years old.
When I was 20, I picked up and left my entire family, who were in Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles on my own.
I just found the piano so fascinating and wonderful, and I begged my parents to buy me one. In the end, they bought me a toy piano and eventually an upright piano, and I started lessons.
I played the piano as a boy for six years, from the time I was six to 12 years old. My piano lessons ended when my father died because our family had no more money. I used to have a mestiza teacher. She'd come once a week to teach me piano lessons, and she'd bribe me each time with an apple; otherwise, I wouldn't play.
Because you’re such a good salesman, and if you go work for a company, they’re going to use you as a salesman. If you’re going to be a salesman, you might as well be selling something worthwhile, like education
I moved to Los Angeles when I was 20 years old and was absolutely terrified. I grew up in a small town, so the city itself scared me. I initially did not plan on staying but fell in love with it and never went home.
I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.
I love the Elvis movies. I used to watch them. In every single one of his movies he wasn't acting as a car salesman - he was acting as a car salesman who loved to play guitar.
A lot of the stuff that's happening now, I can trace back to 'Death of a Salesman.' Francine Maisler, the casting director, saw 'Death of a Salesman' and called me in for 'Unbroken.' The casting director of 'Normal Heart' had seen 'Salesman' too. I look back on it now, and it's like one thing led to another; it was a chain reaction.
I was a salesman just out of college, traveling all over American roads in the cause of selling handbags to stores that would in turn sell them to American women, not unlike my father had done.