I had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Branch Rickey lookalike than a Harrison Ford lookalike. I didn't want the audience to go into the film thinking that they knew me from some previous experience in a movie.

Baseball was a metaphor for America, both here and in terms of how it was understood by the rest of the world.

I believe that the racial injustice which existed such a short time ago probably would have persisted longer if the color barrier had not been broken in baseball.

I think American films right now are suffering from an excess of scale. Lots of movies we're seeing now are more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships. Twelve- to 20-year-olds are maybe the largest economic force in the US movie business. I'm not a very nostalgic person - but I enjoy a good story.

If you're asking me to acknowledge that I've gotten older, I can do that.

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.

My ambition from the very beginning was to make a good part for myself, something differently to what lately I've been doing.