Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known.

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

Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.

I was always involved in art and when I went under contract at Warner Bros. at 18, it afforded me the possibility of never having to stop painting, never having to stop taking photographs and so on, and to actually live a cultural life.

[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again.

... I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.

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.