I remember when we were doing the love scene in Some Kind Of Hero, we got in bed nervously. Then he looked up, and it was very genuine, and he went, " Richard Pryor's in bed with Lois Lane!" And it was so cute!

I got a reputation for being sort of nuts and difficult, because I was at that point, so I wasn't much in demand. And also, on the basic level, I'd made a lot of movies that didn't make money. And if you make movies that don't make money - I mean, it is a business, after all - you are not in demand.

The only movie that ever really scared me was The Exorcist,but even then, I was laughing part of the time.

I went to work and did a lot of homework about what was wrong with me

I was with Brian De Palma at the time, and he said he wrote the role specifically for me. I don't know what that says about the way he saw me, since the role was of a castrating killer. Brian came one morning to the house, said "Here's your Christmas present." He wrote the character to have a Swedish accent, but since I couldn't pull that off, he switched it to French-Canadian. It was such a romantic time in my life. Everyone was young and passionate and convinced they were going to change film forever.

Acting's fun, but life's more important

There's a new science out called orthomolecular medicine. You correct the chemical imbalance with amino acids and vitamins and minerals that are naturally in the body