Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.

There's an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what's there.

I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs.

I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.

Obvious things like The Deer Hunter. After that happened, the scripts got better. Opportunities happened.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.