Ken Wahl
I worked with Paul Newman when I was, what, 21 years old?. It was a police movie, so I was his partner and we were sitting in the car while they're setting up the cameras, and we would talk... He was a wonderful guy; I really loved him.Collection: Car
I'm an Independent, but a Conservative.
I don't hate liberals.
I'm on disability now. But I paid into it my whole life. And I hated getting it - I waited seven years before I got it because it disgusted me so much. I didn't want it.
I really think that most liberals think that the things they think are helping the country. I really do.
I virtually disappeared after my accident in 1992.
You've got your extreme right-wing guys, who want to have not just the 2nd amendment, owning a gun, but they want a whole arsenal. They've gone a little bit too far - in my opinion.
My mother took my brother and me, and we moved to Tucson.
I vanished for 20 years.
Instead of caring about the country, people end up serving their party. I think people understand that, and I think they hate it.
One thing I do understand - after getting in my accident and being paralyzed and having to learn to walk again... the depression that I felt was not only that I can't participate in life anymore... but that I felt useless.
Small measures mean a lot.
Ya know, I've been lucky enough to have been all over the world. And there's a lot of places in the world that I really enjoy. But it's still not America.
Even America, with all its problems and all its difficulties... it's really still is the best place on Earth, in my opinion.
I got my 'H-S-D' degree, my High School Drop-out.
The thing that amazes me about modern life is you have all these devices that are supposed to make your lives more enjoyable and simpler... and it's the exact opposite.
Everybody with all these devices and it's oh I gotta tweet, I gotta Facebook, I gotta this, I gotta that... it's like they're crazy with all this technology.
You know the expression, 'Necessity is the mother of Invention'? It's gotten completely reversed. Now, it's 'Invention is the mother of Necessity.' Things that come out now... nobody thinks, Gee I really need that. It's just another new thing that somebody's invented that they gotta pick up.
I think there's so much corruption.
I consider myself an independent.
I wouldn't want to try to get involved in the Republican Party.
I don't like political parties in general.
This is the philosophy of the liberals - getting something for nothing.
After I got hurt, I went back to work twice, and both times it put me back in the hospital.
The disability that I get, which I'm grateful for the rest of America helping me get - but it's such a small percentage compared to what I was able to make when I was working, so, not just on a moral level but also on a financial level - I didn't want it.
We weren't destitute to the point that we worried about our next meal, but our next meal after that was in question. So we really were the poor class that lived paycheck to paycheck, and it's a horrible way to live.
We were very proud in the sense that we would never take any government handouts. My parents, God bless them, never took a nickel from the public trough, and I'm very proud of that. But, on the other hand, they essentially worked themselves to death. Both of them.
After I got hurt, animals to me were a great comfort, because I went through a very long, dismal period where I just felt completely useless and worthless because I really couldn't do anything after my injury. And I just hated that feeling. But animals, to me, were a great solace and great comfort.
Well the press, as we all know, has been in Obama's pocket.
Wherever you are on the political spectrum - Left, Right or Center - everybody knows that government waste is rampant throughout the Federal government.
I don't like to have labels or to be pigeonholed into certain areas, but I guess you could say I've always been conservative.
I very much have disdain for the political parties and the political process.
I'm much more comfortable... one on one, than I am with a lot of people.
When I go get a rescue kitty, I don't get the perfect ones, I always get the ones who got problems, cause I feel sorry for them, so I've had some very old kitties, and some one-eyed kitties.
My family was very apolitical. We were just lower-middle class working people - and sitting around at the dinner table, politics was never a discussion.
I didn't realize I was a conservative until after I got into show-business.
In all my experience - I had a very serious spinal injury - my entire career was only 11 years long, I can tell you that no one in Hollywood ever asked me for my political affiliation or my religious beliefs or anything like that. What they care about is making money.
I'm a very happy, content private person. Even when I was acting before I got hurt I never had a publicist, I never had PR help. I always wanted my work to do the talking for me. I did very little publicity.
Being trained is fine if you feel that it helps you, but you can be the greatest trained actor in the world, and if no one wants to watch you do it, it's all for naught.
I'm trying to do the best job that I can. It's just that I'm pragmatic and practical about the business. It is a business, and I approach it that way.
I think there may have been somewhat of a backlash against me because I have been successful too easily. I think there's been some resentment about that in the acting community.
I've always had a theory that the biggest odds you'll ever face are the odds of being conceived. So if you beat those odds, the odds on everything else are a lot less.
The first movie I ever did was the first acting I ever did.
Chryslers were the best. They had the best engines, the Hemis. Those in the know know.
I like being around my family.
I like to do movies when the camera is rolling, I have fun then. But everything else is a bunch of garbage, you know?
You won't see any headlines about me in those supermarket tabloids.
I'm sort of proud of the fact that I'm sort of a - for want of a better term - an anti-celebrity.
Put it this way, I'm a regular guy with the exception of having an unusual - by regular guy standards - occupation.
My dad's a mechanic.