It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.
What the Americans want to see is life in their drama. Life of all sorts: hard lives, easy lives, or lives which, like most of ours, are a mixture of the two.
I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.
Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.
In all honesty, I'm not able to talk about contracts. It's nothing with 'American Idol' in particular, it's just things I really need to take care of in my life.
Speaking as a Democrat, all my life battling for what I conceived to be Democracy, and what I conceived to be right, I am yet an American above Democracy.
Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That's not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that's what life needs to be - and that if it's not that, it's all screwed up. It's not.
I love American ski resorts because they're open to everyone, are not incredibly expensive. They're not snobby and you can have fun all day long on the most excellent mountains.
All my artistic response comes from American things, and I guess I've always had a weakness for heroic imagery.
This nation's elected leaders owe all Americans the duty of formulating an Iraqi policy based on sound analysis of the actual facts.
People have no tolerance. They think all bugs are bad. It's the American way. If you don't like something, kill it.
It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.
Most American elementary schools and high schools, and nearly all colleges and universities, teach everything that is significant from a liberal/Left perspective.
I write on sacred stories, symbols and rituals of all cultures - European, American and Chinese - but my audiences, typically, like me to focus on India.
We may be a nation of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, but first and foremost we are all human beings and Americans.
The girl next door isn't necessarily blonde and blue-eyed anymore. So I don't feel like I need to morph into that all-American thing.
All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. King for his bravery and commitment to civil rights and nonviolence that changed this nation - and world - for the better.
When I first ran for Congress in 1992, I campaigned on a pledge to make affordable, quality healthcare a right, not a privilege, for all Americans.
These funds will ensure that ports will be able to pay for adequate security measures to protect all Americans against terrorist attacks from our seaports.
It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.
I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.
