If I Don't Get Food In My

I'm Kind Of Private And I Keep Things Inside A Lot, But It's Been So Wonderful To Realize That People Care About You In A Very Deep Way And That There Is Some Bond Between An Actor And His Audience. I Don't Even Know How To Describe That Feeling.

To Be Brutally Honest, For Much Of That Time, I Was The Only Person In The World With Parkinson's. Of Course, I Mean That In The Abstract. I Had Become Acutely Aware Of People Around Me Who Appears To Have The Symptoms Of Parkinson's Disease, But As Long As They Didn't Identify With Me, I Was In No Rush To Identify With Them. My Situation Allowed, If Not Complete Denial, At Least A Thick Padding Of Insulation.

There's A Connection That's Hard To Explain. It's The Feeling I Get When I See Someone Shuffle Up To Meet Me, Or Say Something, And I Can Instantly Tell By The Cant Of Their Head Or By The Movement Of Their Arms -- And These Are People Who Aren't Even Full-blown Symptomatic -- That They're One Of Us. And The Look They Give Me, It's Not Just Gratitude -- I Don't Care About The Gratitude -- But Solidarity. And Shared Optimism. And A Resiliency That Just Makes Me Think We're Doing The Right Thing, And That This Truly Is A Community.

The Moment I Understood This - That My Parkinson's Was The One Thing I Wasn't Going To Change - I Started Looking At The Things I Could Change, Like The Way Research Is Funded.

The 'rescue Me' Gig Was A Unique Opportunity To Play A Character - A Misanthropic, Angry Guy - Who Was So Contrary To How People Think Of Me.