Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.

I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, 'Dad I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?' And I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly.'

I couldn't get a job acting all the time and there were down periods where I could take photographs or paint. I got into a lot of trouble when I was young, from making two films with James Dean, watching him work and then him dying and thinking I could turn down work. There was a big difference, he was a star and I wasn't. So I got in a lot of trouble and was essentially banned from Hollywood.

In Method acting, you can't have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open.

I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people.

I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.

I was an abstract expressionist before I had seen any abstract expressionist paintings. I started when I was a kid and continued just doing abstract stuff all through high school.