Long Kiss Goodnight has a huge cult following. They could make another version of that movie right now and make a lot of money.

Hair is very, very distinctive. I started that with that boxing movie I did, The Great White Hype. The director wanted me to look like Don King, and everybody knew who Don King was. But I didn't want to be Don King. I wanted the man to be Rev. Fred Sultan, so I decided to make him look like Julius Caesar. And from that point on, I just decided, I had this great wig-maker, so I just found hairstyles that I felt would be distinctive for every character. Like an adventure.

The thing I get the most [in public] is, 'Hey, Eugene.' You know what I mean? There's no catch phrase like: 'What a week I'm having.' People will actually just say, 'Hey, Eugene' or 'Hi, Eugene.' It's a great thing; they feel that comfortable calling me by my first name. It's not being forward. It depends how you say it. I think they can't help themselves. They think they know me. I find it gratifying.

Sometimes one of my ways of choosing movies that I want to do is if it's the kind of movie I would have gone to see when I was a kid, and this is a movie I actually did go see, as a kid. And I think it will be exciting for audiences to see now.

I'm a character actor and that's what I do. All the roles that I've had have been mainly support roles, because character actors don't usually get the lead in movies. It rarely happens.

What I remember from [the first meeting with Samuel L. Jackson] was that he was a friendly, animated kind of guy. His screen image is a hard boiled intimidating kind of character. That's what I remembered thinking, 'Boy, this guy seems like a normal guy.'

When people want me to sign an autograph in a restaurant, and I'm eating. I don't even have to say no, I just kind of stop and look at them ... "Oh, okay. I'll ... I'll come back."