If I were just a bit taller and I was a little more handsome or something like that, I could have played all the roles that I have played, and played many more. There is such a thing as a handicap, but you've got to be that much better as an actor. It kept me from certain roles that I might have had, but then, it kept others from playing my roles, so I don't know that it's not altogether balanced. I have not collected art. Art collected me. I never found paintings. They found me. I have never even owned a work of art. They owned me. To be entrusted with a character was always a big responsibility to me. Ah yes, I remember well what it was like to be a true collector, that soft explosion in the heart, that thundering inner "Yes!" when you see something you must have or die. For over 30 years I made periodic visits to Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" in a Washington museum, and stood before that magnificent masterpiece hour after hour, day after day, plotting ways to steal it. Of course, I started as a collector. A true collector. I can remember as if it were only yesterday the heart-pounding excitement as I spread out upon the floor of my bedroom The Edward G. Robinson Collection of Rare Cigar Bands. I didn't play at collecting. No cigar anywhere was safe from me. My father and uncles and all their friends turned their lungs black trying to satisfy my collector's zeal. And then came cigarette cards, big-league baseball players. I was an insatiable fiend, and would cheerfully trade you three Indian Joes for one of that upstart newcomer, Ty Cobb. Acting and painting have much in common. You begin with the external appearance and then strip away the layers to get to the essential core. This is reality and that is how an artist achieves truth. When you are acting, you are playing a part, you are being somebody else. You are also, at the same time, being yourself. The sitting around on the set is awful. But I always figure that's what they pay me for. The acting I do for free.