I became an actor to escape my own personality. Acting is the most therapeutic thing in the world. You see, through acting you come full circle in your personality and, oh, what a grand time you can have along the way being wonderful people through your characters...I think all the courage that I may lack personally I have as an actor.

I'm really a pussycat and this [bad-boy] image has been totally overblown for 30 years. Sure, I used to rumble a little but I don't do that stuff anymore. I'm an old man now. When you reach your 50s, you realise that if you don't mellow, you won't last.

There were times when I got frightened. Things weren't going right, so I just went out and got smashed. That's me. Something goes wrong, I find a bottle. I don't like it about myself but I've done it before and I'll do it again. But I never vanished for days or held up shooting or quit the picture.

Acting is characterization, the process of two entities merging-the actor and the role.

He had a winning smile, but everything else was a loser.

But when it became an international hoopla where careers lived and died on whether or not you did or didn't get an Oscar, then it got out of hand.

We [he and his wife Trish Van Devere] don't talk politics. I'm an independent conservative; she's a radical Democrat. We never vote together.