I like characters with problems. I like to understand them... To play alcoholics, fetishists, strange girls, you have to dig deep within yourself. It's 'elsewhere' that interests me. ↗
People pay a million dollars to be recognized, but nobody cares about them. They cared about me because I did things other men were afraid to do. That's why my fans identified with me. ↗
Well the themes for me were and remain sex and love and grief and death - the things that make us and undo us, create and destroy, how we breed and disappear and the emotional context that surrounds these events. ↗
That's one of the reasons I wanted to be an actor, to be like them. And there they were at my table, all talking about how nervous they were, about the lines, and so forth. No matter how big you get, you still have the same kinds of anxieties and so forth. ↗
They're naughty, all those writers - they mess around with people. I know James Gandolfini got a bit fed up on 'The Sopranos': if he said anything in front of a writer, told them a story from his life, it could make its way into the script. ↗
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.' ↗