As you become famous you lose some of your anonymity, which is wonderful for an actor to have because you can observe people and also people don't have such a strong sense of who you are and that sort of thing.

I remember in one of my early films I had a drunk scene. It was Kiss Me Goodbye, with Sally Field, and I was playing this kind of nerdy guy who gets drunk and dances. And so I thought, "Oh well, I'll just get drunk and do the dance." And it was wonderful, but then I had the rest of the day, and the next day. So I learned that you don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.

I think we're all hooked, I feel my own hook-ness on immediate gratification you know. I want what I want.

Whenever I work on a part, I look at the world through the filter of the character and I pick things they might use through my observations of real life.

Working with my dad was such a gas. We approached the work in a similar way. We only made two films together when I was an adult, Tucker, and Blown Away, but it was so much fun to play with your parent like that.

This is many, many years ago. It was shortly after "Starman" I think. I don't know how close I was to getting the part. I met with [director] Penny Marshall and that's one that I knew would be a hit. It just felt hit-ish. But it's like you go to a store and you see a jacket and you go "I love that jacket" and you try it on and it's too big or too small for you and it's the only one they have. For some reason that part just didn't fit me.

I remember being on a black-and-white set all day and then going out into daylight and being amazed by the colour.