(audience cheering)
That's nice.
Nice.
That never gets old, I wouldn't think.
No, not that one. Yeah.
Let me just say that I'm sorry about your habit.
I didn't know that.
About what, which is this?
(audience laughing)
Wine. Oh, the wine. Yeah, yeah.
It gets me through the day.
(audience laughing)
You should use a glass like that, by the way.
That was a great bit.
Oh, thank you, thank you very much-
And now let me just give you one more compliment
then I'm gonna shut up. Yeah.
You gave a commencement speech at your alma mater.
In 2000, I spoke, yeah at Harvard, yeah.
And I read it.
Mm-hm. You're very intelligent.
Oh, thank you, thank you very much.
(audience cheers) I really loved that.
Thank you, that's nice.
(audience applauding)
You're welcome.
(audience applauding)
You said that with a little bit of the air of,
"Despite what we've all seen all these years."
(audience laughing)
Like any great actor you can convey so much wordlessly.
I had hoped not to that time.
(audience laughing)
Well, thank you so much.
So much to talk about,
you know, we were talking about this today
and you know, I brought up,
I've been a fan of yours for so many years.
I think you may have the best voice
of any actor on the planet right now.
You have a terrific mellifluous voice.
Of course it's has been featured in "Shawshank Redemption",`
(audience cheering)
"March of the Penguins".
You know, and I was just thinking about it today.
This is something that,
did you always have that voice?
No, no, no. Is it a natural gift?
It's not a natural gift at all.
I don't think that any voice is a natural gift,
someone helps you get it.
Really? Yeah.
That never occurred, I mean, honestly never occurred to me
that that's something that you worked on.
What was your voice like before you started your work?
It was high.
I had a very thick Southern accent.
I was raised in Mississippi and--
(audience applauding)
thank you very much.
We need that. Yeah.
(audience laughing)
No, when I studied Acting 101 at LACC,
you know, Los Angeles City College,
and I had a very,
it turned out that it was a very fine acting,
not acting, but voice coach, voice instructor.
He gave us voice and diction
and voice development
and voice development is where he started
working you down in your register.
He says everybody, most people talk a bit higher
than their normal--
Right here, yeah.
(audience laughing) I mean, I've always,
I notice voice just because I've really never liked mine.
And so I, when I hear someone with a terrific voice,
I think, "How did they do that?
How did they get there?
How were they able to have that voice?"
Why don't you like your voice?
It sounds great.
Well it sound very annoying to me.
(mimicking his voice)
That's what it sounds like to me,
that's my own maybe self hate
(audience laughing)
coming through, but.
(audience laughing)
Okay.
(both laughing)
Again, you don't have to say anything.
What were we gonna talk about
if we hadn't talked about voice?
We were gonna talk about so many things.
First of all,
you are so revered as an actor, who are the actors
that you really love the most who love the most?
Love the most? Who inspires you as a--
Every actor who works inspires me.
I'm a big thief.
(audience laughing)
The diction coach was very good.
Yeah. Yeah.
(audience laughing) I'm a thief.
Let there be no mistake about that.
I make sure that you understand
what I'm saying here.
When I was a kid, I lived in the movies.
I, that was where I went.
If I wasn't reading a book,
I was going to the movies and every actor that I saw
from Jimmy Wakeley, all the way to Howard Duff,
Victor Mature,
I watched with the idea of one of these days,
I'm gonna be able to do that.
The only person I can't do that with is James Cagney
and Clark Gable.
Well, what they had was this dialogue affinity.
If you've listened to Clark Gable,
dialogue comes out of him like that and it's all clear.
Mm-mh. I can't do it.
You said you watch some of these actors
and you say you're a thief.
You take something that you like that they're doing,
which I think is the same, any creative process.
I mean-- Maybe.
It's just learning how to control yourself, I think.
I used to watch Victor Mature movies.
I don't know if anybody ever saw like "Kiss of Death",
Mm-mh. "Samson and Delilah".
Victor mature had this habit of maybe if he was gonna
show any kind of emotion, he'd just pop his scalp back.
(audience laughing)
(Morgan laughing)
He'd be looking at you
and then he would say something that meant something
and he'd go.
(audience laughing)
That's great though, I think we have to...
(audience applauding)
I think it's true, in music as well.
Musicians say they listen.
The first number one job to becoming a great songwriter is
to listen to everybody.
And you consciously or subconsciously,
you take what you like. What you need.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's true.
They've say about writing,
if you wanna write, you better read.
Right. So, yeah.
It's the same in this business too.
Everybody's, I'm the sum of everybody I watched,
who inspired me growing up and some of it's conscious
some of it's unconscious, but I think that's true,
but now I'm gonna pop my skull back all the time.
(audience laughing)
[Morgan] Yes, look at it.
(audience applauding)
You have to tell me something surprising.
You have to give me shocking news right now.
Okay, shocking news. Yes.
You're good at what you do.
(audience laughing)
I guess you're not supposed to do it over and over again.
You can, if you're trying to make a point.
(both laughing)
Vibrate my hair maniacally.