I have to tell you, you can't have an ego when you're an actor. A lot of actors have them, but in reality most of those people are just sensitive artists dying for a hug and a compliment.

'W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.

My craziest on-set story comes from during the Goonies, when I came up to Spielberg and said that I wanted to climb the walls of the tunnels and that it represented my mother's womb, for some odd reason. I was reading Stanislawski at the time and Spielberg's response was "Why don't you just act."

Fear - there's always fear. You re-create yourself in every movie, don't you?

I'd heard rumors about Oliver Stone before we went to work on and I don't get it. To me, he's one of the most sensitive directors. He is just fascinated by why people act in the ways that they do. His movies are an excuse to explore that idea, and he wants to work with people who are as passionate about exploring it as he is. So we got along brilliantly.

I do think, from the other side, that George W. ush was somewhat of an innocent in his thinking about what Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War and by bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. I think he believed that he could do the same thing by bringing democracy - or Midland, Texas, really - to the Middle East. I truly think he felt it was possible. "I want to do for the Middle East what Reagan did for the Soviet Union."

I don't have a favorite I like and then I'll go and watch "Days of Heaven" and I go how beautiful is that. So I think, at least my idea, was lets bring something again that's primitive and guttural but then let's also do something beautiful where you're outside and this isn't a typical western setting. It's lush. It's green. It's beautiful.