All my Latino side is from the Bronx.

I wasn't a great student, but I was interested in this theater thing, and I could spend hours in the library researching why the cuffs in the 18th century had four buttons. It was my handle.

I've had the good fortune to play characters that have a role-model thing to them.

I know it affected me when I saw certain actors growing up. I had a drama teacher that would take us to see plays in New York, and it was seeing James Earl Jones and Raul Julia - I mean, this guy comes from the place my mother comes from. He's doing Shakespeare right now, and it doesn't seem to matter that he has an accent.

I always grapple with myself, from job to job, 'Is this going to make an impact in some way?'

As an actor, you think to yourself, 'I want to do good work,' but you also want the work that you do to make an impact in some way.

I can't get into talking about why another actor left. It has nothing to do with me.

I'm happy David Caruso is out there working.

I am very Latino in everything I am and I do, but there's a part of me that's also something else. I'm reflective of the way this country's gonna be in the next 40 years. More multicultural is what we'll see.

I think education was the key for me, and that's what I tell kids. That base in the classics gave me something to springboard from, which I wouldn't have had if I'd come out to Los Angeles early and been guest punk of the week on 'Hill Street Blues.'