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Mandy Patinkin on how \'Homeland\' rekindles his \'optimism for humanity\' [Exclusive Video]

Better Call Saul, Ray Donovan, Jim Carter, Jon Voight, Jonathan Banks, Mandy Patinkin, Homeland, Peter Dinklage, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Emmy Awards Nominations 2015 - Drama Supp. Actor

"It's impossible to participate on any level in 'Homeland' either as an actor or a viewer and not have it affect you," says actor Mandy Patinkin about his role in Showtime's espionage thriller (

). "If you're paying attention to the world, you're living in the storylines of 'Homeland.'"

Do you think Patinkin will win Best Drama Supporting Actor? Hurry -- make your predictions now and you could win our $1,000 prize as well as a place of honor on our leaderboard and a leading role in next year's Top 24 Users (the two dozen folks who do the best predicting this year's Emmys).

According to our racetrack odds, he will likely face past champ Peter Dinklage ("Game of Thrones"), as well as previous nominees Jonathan Banks ("Better Call Saul"), Jim Carter ("Downton Abbey") and Jon Voight ("Ray Donovan").

Patinkin says he was politically engaged even before he took the role as CIA director Saul Berenson. He credits that to his wife, who "has been my main teacher in that world." But the show's dark geopolitical storylines haven't affected his worldview the way you might think.

"It effects, most of all, my spiritual nature," he explains, "and by that I mean a constant rekindling and prayer of hope for humanity and optimism for humanity, because listening to the dark side either in the fictional world of 'Homeland' or in the non-fictional world of my drive to work, I have no escape, so I'm constantly embroiled, as we all are all over the world, in the reality of the world we live in. And I have two choices: to become despairing or to be hopeful and do the best I can to make a difference."

And when it comes to making a difference in the world, Patinkin believes art has an important role to play. "I think if you said to me, 'Well, how do you make a difference in "Homeland"?' I would say, probably in only one way I can really try to do every second, which is to listen to whoever is speaking to me," he says. "The thing that's most lost in our world today is the ability to listen to each other. It's lost in our Congress. It's lost all over the world. And so if we as a pretend-world can at least show that we're listening, even if we make mistakes, I think that's a good thing."

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He adds, "That's what I think Shakespeare, and Stephen Sondheim, and the writers of 'Homeland,' when they're at their best, do, which is to turn the darkness into light. That's what our job is."

The fourth season of "Homeland," which aired in last fall, took place in Pakistan but was shot in Cape Town, South Africa, and at first Patinkin was "a bit apprehensive. I had never been to Cape Town or South Africa. It was far away from home, and you certainly couldn't commute," but the experience was a transformative one, because it's "one of the most beautiful places on Earth" but also "a most heartbreaking place because of the dream that was never imagined but realized when Mandela came to be a free man, and then he became president, and the hopes were high. And now things are in a precarious state again in terms of the disparity between the haves and the have-nots."

He was so affected by the experience that he stayed in South Africa for another month after "Homeland" had finished shooting. Season five begins production this summer in another new locale, Berlin, but instead of apprehensive, this time Patinkin is eager to continue "riding on Saul's coattails" as a world traveler.

Playing Saul has earned Patinkin Emmy nominations for Best Drama Supporting Actor for the last two years, but even though he's had his fair share of success on the awards scene -- winning a Tony for "Evita" in 1980 and an Emmy for "Chicago Hope" in 1995 -- he's open about avoiding the campaign trail as much as possible.

"I don't want to campaign for an award," he says. "I love going to work. I love doing the work. Awards are complicated. Of course, it's wonderful if we get awards, it's good for business, it's good for the way you feel, but I also want to feel good if there's no award, if there's no nomination. I want us all to feel good about how lucky we are that we get to do this work we love – who gets to do that in the world? Not a lot of people."

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Emmys: No Reruns in Drama Supporting Actor (1997 - 2012)

While the Emmys often reward the same programs and performers over and over, that's not been true in the race for Best Supporting Drama Actor where no one has repeated for the past 16 years

Click on the arrow to the right of the photo to see the 16 different men who have claimed this trophy since 1997.

Above: The late Ray Walston ("Picket Fences") is the last man to win two trophies for Drama Supporting Actor (1995-1996), a feat that only three other men accomplished at the Emmys: Stuart Margolin  ("The Rockford Files" in 1979-1980), Michael Conrad ("Hill Street Blues" in 1981-1982) and Larry Drake ("L.A. Law" in 1988-1989).

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