If at the end of the day, people look at it and say, oh, yeah, I liked his stuff, or for the most part I liked his stuff, or I've enjoyed watching some of the things he's done, that's all I can hope for.
— Joe Mantegna
There's good and evil going on. We have cops. We have robbers.
I reached that day that I always thought might happen, where I say to myself I don't want to do this anymore. I'm looking for some stability. I want to stay home.
I did plays and movies and whatever all over the place.
I've spent the better part of the last twenty-five years doing a lot of traveling.
You know the way I play golf, it's a good I do these things for charities.
I'm in the wrong racket if I didn't want a public life.
You learn that not all things fall into a certain kind of pattern that can be predictable and that can be understandable and that's going to be easy, you know.
I'm a character actor so I've jumped around to all kinds of things.
But we're still in somewhat a Puritanical society in a lot of ways.
For every Mother Teresa, there's a Jeffrey Dahmer.
There's now a Fat Tony doll, which cracks me up. But you feel honored that they asked you to do a voice.
When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.
That's why I really don't play cards or gamble. Because I'd crack.
There are a lot of people who will come to me for advice or whatever.
When I played Dean Martin, he was dead when we made the movie but there would have been nothing better than to spend a week with Dean Martin if I could have.
Whenever you're going to play a real person, you run the risk of well, everybody in the world kind of has an image of what that person is and who he should be and so you really have to do your homework.
For the last thirty years in my career I never know what I'm doing next.
I mean, believe me, I'm not for censorship.
If you're going to believe in a God, then you also have to equally believe that there's a flip side to this.
I wouldn't be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian. It's become part of our culture, those characters.
I've loved it, but I have a wife and two children.
They put me in the drama class, and that's the path I've taken.
But what I will do is I'll acknowledge it and if it can be of any help the fact that I do acknowledge it then maybe other people will benefit from it because I do have somewhat of a public forum being in the line of work I am.
I mean, it's the life lessons that I suppose you learn that nobody gets a free ride and that you do the best you can with the means that you can and try to open yourself to as much knowledge and all that that you can.
Dean Martin is one of my heroes.
You talk to the real cops and they say ninety percent of it is paperwork.
