I don’t want to go back to the national team and play the hypocrite when some of them asked for me to be kicked out.
In 1962, my injury wasn’t because of violence; I just kicked the ball and it happened. And that was OK because Brazil won; I didn’t have any difficulty in accepting that. I still got a medal because I’d played two games.
In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.
Government at all levels has kicked the fiscal can down the road for far too long.
I ended up dropping out of high school at 16 and getting kicked out of my home. My parents told me, sadly, that because I was so disruptive to the rest of the household, that I could no longer live under their roof.
One of the things I did to make myself feel better is that I kicked up my running even more. I knew that I had to stay active, that I had to keep living as if my life was actually going to unfold naturally because when you stop, when you freeze, and you think about it, that’s when the demons come and can drag you down.
You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different, and critics say we make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different, and you get kicked in the gut for it.
I was heavily into sport from 10 to 15, I was in all the teams, and it was everything to me. But I was very young for my school year and when puberty kicked in for my classmates I got left behind.
Because Jews were kicked out of every country in Europe at one time or another, and plenty of other places as well, there isn’t an ability to identify with a national heritage – you’ll never hear a Jew say ‘I’m German’ or ‘I’m Polish,’ without saying something about being Jewish as well, and for good reason.
