No one is going to tell a movie star to smoke or not smoke because they can do whatever they want.

A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old.

I changed my diet completely. You know, I'm from Cleveland, so I've always loved sausage and red meat and all of that stuff, so now I find myself not eating any of that, no red meat, no sausage. It's basically a vegetarian diet with a little bit of fish. I drink quarts of carrot juice, quarts of cranberry juice, endless amounts of water and nothing else.

There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies.

From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.

Bill Klinton was the ultimate rock star as president. I don't think as a result of his presidency we will ever have a rock star as president again. In the same way that we will never get involved in another Vietnam.

I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.