Action star Steven Seagal, whose recent #1 movie, Exit Wounds, was just released on dvd and home video, invited PETA into the sprawling southern California home he shares with his wife, their daughter and a slew of adopted cats and dogs to share his sentiments about animal rights. Seagal, a longtime animal advocate, received a Humanitarian Award for helping PETA establish the first animal protection laws in Taiwan.

When did you first realize that you cared about animals?

From the time that I could think, and deliberate, and understand. Even though I was born in a city, we were also close to the woods in Michigan, and the lakes, and got to be around animals a lot. Of course, being raised in an American city as a child, back then people all believed in hunting and fishing. And back from an early age, that was something that I always felt not good about.

Early on, I went into Asia to study Buddhism, acupuncture, herbology, and the martial arts. This was in the late ’60s, early ’70s, that for the first time, I learnt the deeper meaning of Buddhism. It became apparent to me that the lives of all sentient beings, from the smallest insect to the mightiest human, are equally precious. I started to learn a little bit about equanimity. Now anyone around me here knows, we don’t allow someone to kill a spider. We don’t allow someone to kill a fly. All life is equally precious.

What do you think about PETA’s approach?

Listen, it’s like being married. You never agree with everything everybody does that you’re close to. I’m deeply involved in PETA because the truth is, we’re saving the lives of sentient beings, and we’re helping those that are suffering, animals who are being treated cruelly, murdered, tortured.

In your speech for PETA’s humanitarian award, you talked about embarrassing some of the companies into changing—that really struck a lot of people.

Well, our judicial system is almost useless. It's highly flawed. And it only makes for better business for [companies] to keep doing what they’re doing because our judicial system will not stop them or fine them enough for it to matter to them. So, the only way that we can stop or deter these people from doing what they’re doing is by embarrassing them. And quite frankly, when you have a situation where there is an entity that’s making money, it's hard to stop them. The more money they make, the more visible they are, and the more visible they are, the more vulnerable they are to exposure in the press.

What would you say to people who say that animals are here for us to use?

I had a foreman once who said that to me, and he didn’t last very long. He was supposed to be looking after my horses and all of my animals. I don’t feel that way. I think we’re here to take care of each other. It’s a very superficial thought that we are superior. Some animals are smarter than some humans, let me tell you. Any kind of cruelty to animals is heart-wrenching.

The more people commune with animals and relate to animals as equals, the better off we’ll all be. And one of the good examples of that is people who have gone into comas, people who have had strokes, people that are having various and sundry different maladies [so] that they have lost their faculties and capabilities—they’re using communion with animals to bring them back to health. Well, what does that tell you?

The birdman of Alcatraz is a true story. I’d like to remake that movie.

In your travels, have there been any stories or interactions with animals or with people about animals?

Yes, I was in Osaka, Japan. I was having some difficulties with a group of sort of lawless individuals. I had my own dojo, or school, there. There was a big conflict, and it was sort of escalating, and, you know, life wasn’t really easy for me during this time. I was sitting out in front of my dojo and I saw this kind of really mysterious, unusual-looking white dog that just walked right up to me as if he had known me forever. I petted him, and he wouldn’t go away, so I fed him. He stayed with me for a few days—he just sort of adopted me. We have what’s called a ginkon, which is this sort of porch inside the area there, and he slept in there, and I fed him. And about the third day or fourth day [that] he was there, he woke me up with really intense barking at about four in the morning. I was way in the back, but when he woke me, I saw that my dojo was on fire. I quickly managed to summon help, and we got the fire out, and I thanked the dog. And the next day he disappeared.