I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product not a person so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family but now I'm declaring it openly.

There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers great actors great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that because I'm 24 I don't have a family I don't need to make tons of money and I'm not dying to get famous.

I don't come from a famous family and don't have this detachment from everyday people and everyday life. I'm just doing my job and the attention that comes with it is part of the territory.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business but my family keeps me grounded.

I remember Michael saying 'Rich and famous? It's much better to be just rich'. I didn't quite get it to begin with. But he's right. You lose anonymity. I say to my family that you've no idea until you lose it how precious anonymity is.

When you look at Michael Jackson there's nobody who loves him in that family nobody. If they did they'd tell him he didn't have to do all that in order to be famous. All he has to do is keep doing his music and be himself. Michael's been a little touched for about 20 years but somebody needs to pull him aside and tell him they love him.

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.

The importance of human life should be universally respected - and that refers to children before they are born and after. All children have the right to be brought up in a loving two-parent family where the notion of divorce is not even possible.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy tragedy and intrigue.

But I am Armenian and I understand what it is to lose a country and lose a family and have massacres and genocides and everything against my people.