RALPH MACCHIO

I remember making the all-star team in Little League when I was around 11 years old. I was not a great athlete, but I loved it, so making starting second base in the all-star was great for me. I think someone must have been sick and they slotted me in.

I've come up in the scripted world, and I have wished there were more time slots for us to tell compelling scripted stories and not fill the airwaves with a lot of fluff and tabloid entertainment.

The truth is, you have a much richer life if you somehow lead one that you can hold together.

Guys like Spielberg and Zemeckis and really anybody who is a storyteller-filmmaker today has studied Hitchcock and the way he visually tells a story. He was the master of suspense, certainly, but visually you would get a lot of information from what he would do with the camera and what he would allow you to see as the story was unfolding.

There's an audience out there for all these different types of things. Whether it's comedy, motion-picture drama, family movie or a cool, cutting-edge indie, it's nice to know that I can span all those different genres.

To me, in life, if you have a sense of humor about it, that's how you deal with anything.

I was playing this role on 'Ugly Betty,' the sweetest, nicest guy. He was a fun character to play, but I was in a Latin soap opera - where are you gonna go with a nice guy in a Latin soap opera?

I think one of the reasons 'The Karate Kid' film has stood the test of time, aside from 'Get him a body bag,' 'Sweep the leg,' catching flies with chopsticks, all of that stuff that's become pop culture, is that it worked on a human level.

As long as I'm creating, I am happy... whether directing, producing, writing, acting.

Both my kids are way too comfortable in front of the camera.

What's most exciting about the 'Cobra Kai' series is that it pays homage to the legacy; it has the nostalgia sprinkled throughout, the callbacks to all the stuff the fans would want to see. It has a completely fresh, relevant angle into the next generation.

I do live a decently healthy life.

There's little that compares with the thrill of a hit major motion picture experience.

Movies will always be movies, and you can never replace that feeling of when the lights go down and the image comes up.

With 'The Karate Kid' especially, there's been so many references and visual images from that film, you know? Who knew that 'Wax on, wax off' would become part of the American lexicon?

I still feel that the original 'Karate Kid' is the great piece of work that has stood the test of time. It's a bit of soulful magic.

Sometimes I'm crotchety, angry, curmudgeonly - you know, I do have that side. I don't always show it.

My wife and kids maybe beg to differ, but I am generally a good guy.

People's behavior is not always changed based on a loss. I remember my dad or my uncle used to say, 'If that guy's picking on you, punch him once in the face, and he'll never come back again.' I don't know how true that is.

Just because you have experience driving doesn't necessarily mean you have experience teaching how to drive.

I wasn't the guy running out to the Viper Room or comedy clubs until three in the morning. I was the guy running back to watch the Mets win the World Series in 1986.

There is nothing I ever wanted, if I wanted it bad enough, that I didn't get.

My father owned some Laundromats, and when I was 10, he had me in there making change and being an attendant. He taught me that on weekends, you had to get up and go to work. That has been a big help in acting.

I lead a unique existence as someone who is famous for being young on film, or young in the minds of everyone.

Sometimes I wish I was more shrewd.