That I'm a survivor. That I can dream well. That I can work hard. That I have some kind of faith that keeps me in check, keeps me grounded in life. And just really good fortune to have traveled through the fair and still be at the table, so to speak.

Were you lonely back then?

Yes, well, when you say it and you put it on the page, it can have a certain aloneness to it. Very much a loner. Very much an outsider, in some respects, because in the fifties, a broken marriage like I was part of, was really frowned upon. You were made to feel ashamed. And so, my grandparents lived on the other side of the bridge. And then when they passed on, I moved into the neighborhood, and people talked and gossiped. So you felt different. And then of course, going to London, an Irish immigrant, you were made to feel your Irishness. They never let you forget that you were Irish. They wouldn't say my name; couldn't say my name, Pierce. Didn't want to say my name. So they called me "Irish," which I wore as a badge of honor and an emblem of joy, that I had such a name. And so—and then, go to America. You're an immigrant again; you have to fit it. But then, when I got off the plane, thirty years ago in Los Angeles, I felt lucky and was lucky and just felt at home. I loved America, embraced America. I could be anything I wanted to be.

Did you seek out a mentor—

No, I had no one. There was no one. My grandfather was the hand that I held; he was the man that I did adore. But then he went pretty quickly. And then the rest was—there was no father figure. Until I got to London at age eleven, and then my step-father—Bill Carmichael, a lovely man, Glaswegian—he became definitely a figure. Somebody who was kind and loving. But I think when I got to London, too, the movies took over my life in such a glorious way, and the celebration of cinema was immediate and romantic—and I could escape, and did.

What year was that?

'64.

And what were those movies?

Goldfinger: Sean Connery, James Bond. I was as green as the leaves on the tree, and I'd never seen a naked woman. I was fresh-faced, Irish-Catholic, and happy. Happy to be in London. And that movie—that first weekend in London in the summer of '64—was Goldfinger. My mother and father took me to see it, and it was just bedazzling. And consequently, I went every weekend to see the pictures. And I saw Lawrence of Arabia—I didn't know what was going on, but the spectacle of Peter O'Toole was mesmerizing. And then I really got into my stride with Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty and Al Pacino and movies and movies. And just wanting to be up on the silver screen. I had some kind of naïve aspiration to be a film star.

At no point, in my teens, did I ever, ever think I was going to end up where I am. I wanted to be an artist; I left school at fifteen with a cardboard folder of drawings and paintings, and those were my credentials, nothing more. But I had good sense and good intuition, and I knew that I didn't have the education but I wanted artistic life, creative life, and got a job at a studio doing furniture illustration. And one day, hanging my coat up, talking to Allen Porter from the photographic department—who was kind of a geek, cool—and talking about movies, he said, "You should come along to the Oval House Theatre. It's an arts lab, and they do workshops." I said, "What do you mean, workshops? You mean, like, carpentry and stuff?" He said, "No, workshops. Theater workshops." I said, "OK." So I went along that Tuesday night, hair down to my shoulders, eighteen years of age by now, little goatee, earring—and I walked in the doors and never looked back. It was at the height of experimental theater, and I went along Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, then every day of the week, and then eventually gave up my job and started on the road to being an actor.