KK: I think people were drawn to him in part because of that shared sense of pain. And also because he was authentic. They had seen him tell people things they didn’t want to hear—so they trusted him to be true to his word. He wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power; in fact, he greatly admired that quality. He said that “few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence, yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.” I know you’ve thought about moral courage. You’ve described it as requiring actions that draw rejection from the crowd and satisfaction from the heart.

MS: It’s an emotional thing when you challenge the status quo. Where it’s most difficult is with those you love and who love you, when you feel you’re risking their disapproval. You know it’s got to cost you something because anything important costs you something. Part of the journey is accepting the wrath or the disapproval of people you love or a culture you’re a part of, and that includes your family. That’s the hardest thing to do.

For me, it was going against the Catholic Church. I love the faith, but the organization itself has sometimes been an obstacle for me, and I think for a lot of Catholics. I’m talking about the church hierarchy. The rule makers, the authorities in the church, have been generally conservative and dogmatic. I love my faith, but I’ve very often had to challenge the status quo inside the Catholic Church, and this is particularly true when it’s an issue of war and peace. The Catholic Church has supported the theory of Just War, but I believe all war is immoral, and the current pope has been very encouraging in that direction. But during all my life growing up, the Just War theory was a given, and in New York we had Cardinal [Francis] Spellman, who was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War, and he was the military chaplain. In the eyes of the hierarchy, Catholics who disapproved of the war were not good Catholics.

I’ve had trouble with other church dogma, the abortion issue particularly. I’m personally opposed to abortion, but I can’t make that judgment for anyone else because I’m not a woman; I’ve never been pregnant, and I never expect to be. So I’m pro-choice. I would never council anyone not to have an abortion; I wouldn’t judge anyone who did have one; but, of course, the church is very opposed to abortion. It’s a difficult issue for me.

KK: As an activist you’ve been arrested so many times. I’ve read that it was sixty-six times, but who’s counting? You’re a public figure and you’ve had a lot of public criticism. I think of Michael Jordan saying, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” What’s your attitude toward the personal cost of speaking out?

MS: I’ve always resented the extreme right-wing talk radio people! They make so much money on their politics, and my beliefs have been very expensive for me.

KK: You’re laughing, but you’ve never stopped speaking out and taking action—and you’ve been at it for a long time. The first time you organized a strike you were fourteen years old. You were a caddy, and you organized the caddies at the club where you were working, and you were fired. What did you learn from that experience?

MS: What I learned was, if you believe in something, and that belief is based in your fundamental values, and it doesn’t cost you something, you need to question those values. I learned a lot about organizing too. I was the leader, and all the caddies supported me. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get everybody behind me, but it was a total walkout. There were thirty kids, and some of them were older than me—one of them was my older brother. The union only lasted for forty-eight hours. They fired us, but then they called us back because we were so skilled and they needed us. I didn’t even have to promise we’d never strike again.

KK: So you also learned that if you’re skilled enough they’re going to want you back, even if you cause trouble?

MS: I’ve often been asked whether my activism cost me in my career. I don’t like to think about it that way, but when I do, I have to say I probably got as many jobs as I lost. There were probably as many people who supported me as rejected me because of my positions on issues. And in the acting business it was mostly, “Let’s get him in there; he knows how to play this kind of part.” I think that’s generally been true. The real lesson is that, as Daniel Berrigan—who’s one of my heroes—always reminded us, the activists, the peacemakers, can never be confident of success. You can never expect to achieve your goals, but you must never stop trying.

The only success you can be sure of is that you showed up and were willing to accept whatever came your way. As long as you’re willing to accept whatever happens to you for showing up and doing what you have to do for what you believe, and you stick it out, that’s the only success you’re entitled to. You can’t expect to get any further reward, whether it’s a reduction in nuclear weapons or whatever it was you were hoping for. You know going in that’s probably not going to happen. You always hope.

I was arrested once at the Pentagon and they took us inside, and mind you, we just blocked an entrance, we didn’t throw anything; we prayed, we didn’t even raise our voices. And their big issue was, “Do you advocate the overthrow of the US government?” I said, “No, I have some issues with the Reagan administration, but I love the country.” “Do you advocate violently overthrowing it?” I said, “No I never thought of that before. No, no, that’s not it. I’m very nonviolent.” That was their big concern, “Why don’t you like us?” kind of—you know that attitude—and these are just the guys who guard the Pentagon, and I guess there were some civilian guys there too, maybe they were FBI, I don’t know, but that issue seemed so important to them: “What do you have against us? You know, you really should explain yourself. We’re a good country, we do a lot of things, and you ought not—” and I said, “No, I love the country; I love it enough to risk its wrath by drawing attention to the things that are not good about it.” The areas of injustice and cruelty and violence, that’s where we have to focus some attention. We’ve got to be peacemakers first, among ourselves.

Once I interviewed Jimmy Carter when Reagan was president. I said, “It must be very painful for you personally to watch the slow unraveling of your administration now under Reagan,” and he said, “Well, no, I didn’t do it alone, and nothing is ever lost.” And I think that’s right. Nothing is ever lost if you act with moral courage. For you and your children, with me and my generation, and all of us, nothing is ever lost.

KK: What drove you? Theodore Roosevelt talked about the man in the arena, and Robert Kennedy often quoted him:

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena… who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

MS: Yes. I’ve had this sense all my life, and I’ve felt it very deeply, that I had work to do. I always knew I had a purpose. I couldn’t always see beyond acting, but I knew there was something more. I just had to be—I guess the only word I can think of is responsible. I couldn’t be lazy.

KK: A calling?

MS: There’s a guy in our parish, he’s Croatian, and up until a few years ago, he seemed OK. Then he started to look like he wasn’t taking care of himself. Clothes are dirty, and he’s unshaven, and he’s bumming around and asking for money and so forth. So I said to him one day, “What’s happened to you?” Well, he’s fifty years old, he’s been here for twenty years, and he’s undocumented. He has a passport from the 1980s, he’s got no Social Security card because he was with this family, stayed with them for twenty years, and they were nice to him, and he just lived there, but now they’ve gone, and he’s on the street. So we found a place for him to stay, under an apartment building in the neighborhood where they all still know him, and they said it’ll be OK as long as he gets in there before dark, because they didn’t want the tenants to see him. So he said OK, fine, he’s good with that.

He’s kind of testy, and he complains a lot, saying things like “Why doesn’t God strike me dead?” and “My life is useless,” so I talk to him and I keep him on a regular cycle, and he’s not always grateful. I spoke to my confessor about it, and he said, “Never make him feel less than human. Never let anybody see you give him anything.” So I always shake his hand, and that’s it, and I’ve been doing this for years. That’s my… You know what I mean—my cup. I’ve been doing that kind of thing most of my life. I can’t help myself.

KK: Don’t you feel overwhelmed sometimes by how much need there is, by how many people there are who need so much?

MS: All the time. Sometimes I just weep. It’s hard to look at TV; you look at what’s going on now in Syria, and you see how many people are going to be dead by the end of this week, from war and starvation and disease….

I don’t have any illusions about changing anything or about even helping my poor Croatian friend. I don’t have any illusions at all, but I know what I can do now. That’s my responsibility. Reverend King, your father, they had that sense of commitment. They were in the fight. They were in the arena. You can’t be happy if you don’t accept that cup. You have to accept that cup as offered, and you can’t alter it. We try to alter the cup all the time. Oh, take a little of that out, spill a little, could you please put some sugar in it, but eventually you’re going to have to take it exactly as it comes. We have to accept the cup as offered, not altered.