I found out that drama was a fascinating exercise as a way to get out of my self and into somebody else's head.

I get an opportunity to communicate with the audience about the movie that I've made. I get the chance to bring attention to the film that I've made. I care a lot about the movies that I make. I want them to reach an audience, and I want them to be successful. I promote nearly everything that I do, unless I've got some bad taste in my mouth.

As a matter of fact, that was a bit of a problem for me at the beginning of my career - the problem of identification. In The Conversation I played a character who was gay, so nobody recognised me from American Graffiti. When I did Apocalypse Now, after Star Wars, I played an intelligence officer of the American army. George Lucas saw the footage I had done and didn't recognise me until halfway through the scene.

I played maybe one and a half games of Little League. The whole atmosphere of anxious parents and more anxious children was just too much for me.

[On being an actor] .nothing more than a worker in a service occupation . It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant, but I'm waiting on 6 million people in a week if I'm lucky.

If I were a serious person, I'd probably have a real job.

That's always my ambition is to create a character out of what will help tell the story. I've never been an actor to say my character wouldn't do that, because he should do that in order to help tell the story.