Willem Dafoe - UnTitled Project Magazine
It's 2:30pm and I am talking to Willem Dafoe on Skype about the Dionne quintuplets. My body does an involuntary shudder as his laughter cracks out through the speakers-a physical betrayal of Pavlovian proportions to the plethora of villainous (cinematic) acts that typically would pre-empt the sound. Needless to say, it’s a Wednesday unlike any other. With the laptop transmitting Dafoe’s unique timbre across miles, countries and time-zones, it is surreal to say the least. However with distance -and more crucially, reality- placating the detrimental effect of basing so much of reality on the filmic projections of it, Dafoe explores the implications of those projections, of a life devoted to the performances that have been his driving force for so long. Speaking from New York, in the past and present tenses, Dafoe recounts the circumstances that guided his choices from the beginning to the here and now. Recollecting his bafflingly conventional upbringing in the Lynchian-sounding Wisconsin town of Appleton to his rise in the New York theatre scene as well as the annals of the film industry.
Exposing myself a to a certain degree, I was always aware of you having theatre experience prior to my research, but I had no conception of the breadth of your establishment within the medium. Including everything from Theatre X, to the Wooster Group, to your involvement in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, is there any kind of transition or point of artistic realization that stands out within that massive span of experience? Did every kind of shift feel like a natural progression? For instance did film seem like a medium you’d inevitably make moves towards or at the time did you feel there was a lot of risk creatively?
No, it always felt it seemed to once things flowed into the next there were never really any big moments where I noticed a shift, it was just about going towards people and situations and then reacting. All I know is when I was young, where I grew up, I didn’t know any actors. No-one that I knew made their living making theatre or films. Films seemed very far away, films seemed very much a thing that only happened in California. So when I started out performing my identity was formed very much more as a theatre actor and I thought that was what I was interested in. I always liked movies but I think as I was younger I was always more interested in theatre, so when someone saw me and said ‘would you like to be in this movie?’ it was really just something that I tried and I enjoyed. I felt like the two different mediums fed each other in my interest in performing and my interest in making things. So it felt quite natural.
It’s interesting, because out of the scores of interviews I’ve gone over, I’ve rarely heard about you talking about the origins of the connections you had with art and performance other than the stuff you did with the Zuckers and Kentucky Fried Theatre. That notwithstanding, Was there any kind of seminal moment for you in relation to finding the certainty that this was what you wanted to dedicate your life to?
I think it was slow, I think I grew up in a big family, I think you develop a kind of a character within that family to get what you need to get the attention you need to kind of have an identity within this group and I think as a child I grew up being kind of a comedian, the prankster, and I think that was the beginning of my performing life and the beginning of making things, so I think, I never thought of being an actor as being a career and I didn’t really formally train for it very much, so I always assumed I would do something else, and I started out really going towards situations and people and things were much more fluid then when I was younger, I didn’t care, I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow I was just interested in the company I kept and the adventures I was having in the moment. So a kid from the Midwest moves to New York City; and I just went to where the action was, and where the action was there was always a lot of interesting stuff going on downtown so I started to work with a group there.
In respect to the notion of being typecast within a group, you spent many years being typecast as ‘the villain’...
You know its kind of funny that I started out my career playing villains I suppose. I suppose it has to do with what I was presenting and how I look, but the truth is when you’re young if you’ve got a look that isn’t terrifically conventional and you’re interested in saying things that are sort of off-centre and off the periphery, you cultivate an interest in the outlaw culture, the outsider culture, and I think just personally that’s what I was doing. From a very young age I was more interested in art than I was in entertainment. I think that I developed this presentation, or this persona as I was surviving in life really, because as a child I was more like the comedian, a little goofy, a little sweet fat kid, and that part is still in me, but that villain thing was just really a mask that I think was attracted to.
When I was researching, I somehow found it simultaneously surprising and logical that you were born in the mid-west. History is apt to reveal that many artists, especially ones who perpetually keep themselves in a state of transition or perpetual change- have a form of conflict with their upbringing, or their history, or merely the place where they spent their formative years. Was there a conflict rife with in relation to where you came from, and if so what characterized it?
On the one hand I grew up in Appleton which was very white-picket America, then on the other hand it was a very dynamic time where there was a clear shift away from that. I was born in 55’, so I was born in the 50’s and had come from a large family and I have lots of older brothers and sisters, so I grew up in-not a necessarily conservative time and place, but an ‘American’ town in the 50’s and 60’s, and then I also saw my older brothers and sisters go to the university of Wisconsin-Madison where there was a lot of anti-war movement, I would go down and visit them and police would break down the door where I was staying. So I had this kind of mix, because I was younger than the generation that established my community, but I was very close to the counter-culture youth generation that I lived through, through my brothers and sisters.
Coming from a family of 8 siblings who are professionals, and two parents who were as well, what was the lack of appeal with a life of a typical profession and the attraction to one that was so unconventional?
I think I always loved physical jobs and I somehow- growing up in the Midwest middle class and then moving away not really getting a proper education and moving to New York and falling like a couple of social classes made me identify more with working-class people more than I did when I was growing up. I grew up not aspiring so much to so much have a career as have a life, and then I think when I got to N.Y out of that more working class environment I kind of had a shift politically and I started being interested in what it meant to be an artist– and that was a very fertile time for a lot of experimentation in New York City. I’d kind of look around and see things that excited me very much and gave me lots of energy and piqued my curiosity so really everything was set up very much from my back ground, I’m very much a product of my background but at the same time I was lucky to be in New York in a very inspiring time, so it was like I was busy being turned on by people and events to much to think about having a career or getting a job (laughs) and I think when I moved away from home I didn’t have any problems but I think I did move away from home and as many people do I sought to create a new identity, I think it’s a normal thing. You know its an adolescent going out in the world, which I was very ill-prepared for because one thing I did learn is that the experiences/education I had was really good emotionally but wasn’t so good as an education, and not so good really to let me know what the world was. Good training for being a decent human being and knowing how to function in a group which is something I’ve sought out over and over again in the form of a theatre company or a production making a film, but not so good at cultivating curiosity because so much of that culture that I grew up with was based on productivity and making things that had a function. And the interesting thing about art is that it its function is always a little debatable.
What its refreshing about reading about you, researching you, is that there is so little about your personal life beyond the bare constructs: birthplace, marital status, number of children, countries of residence ex. I’ve read that you don’t really go method with a role, that interestingly enough- central to your performances you bring your own self into a role within a foreign context i.e.
I don’t think, “Oh, how would he, the character, do this?” I think, “Oh, I’ve got to run over the hill. What do I have to consider? How do I want to cover it? How do I want to run over the hill this time?” I don’t think in terms of effect and I don’t feel an obligation to become something that I’m not.
you don’t think how a character would run up a hill, you think how you would run up the hill in the context of what is occurring, has occurred, may occur. How much does it help you, especially with the form of your approach when you’re playing a role onscreen or onstage having that kind of anonymity enshrouding your identity?
What you said, what you quoted I still do believe in basically, and it is my approach for the most part. I’ve always been task-oriented. You apply yourself in action and something happens and if you’re not looking for an effect and you’re really open and flexible there can be real transformation or there can be a real shift in how you see things and that’s when you enter the character that’s when you become another person, that’s when you function in the context of the story that makes a character. As far as anonymity I think it just gives you flexibility, flexibility for yourself and flexibility for the audience because if they know too much, its information that works against their ability to be flexible in how they see you. Also more deeply, if you’re in a business of selling yourself of being a persona up and presenting it to the world that contributes to an egocentricity that kind of works against you as a performer because the irony is you want to work for yourself you want to know yourself, but you want to lose yourself in the respect that you want a full range of impulses and opinions and views to be able to apply yourself to being other people, to take other peoples points of view to take a different set of impulses and really the best way to do that is trick yourself into not serving your ego. Or serve something outside of you, if you can trick yourself into that- because it’s not in human nature to do that and its knit within our culture-if you can do that then it can be incredibly liberating.
Being someone whose acclaim has grown progressively throughout the years, Has that been an attitude that you started out with at the very beginning, or one you’ve developed over time?
That’s a good question…who knows how much you really are reacting and justifying and then making a stance out of a condition or how much is that your true nature, I don’t know…you do have some sense of where you do feel comfortable and where you feel free or where you feel humiliated and not comfortable and of course in order to keep my opportunities going you do dabble in some sort of selling of yourself or publicity or celebrity stuff but only to the extent that it allows you to make more work.
In breaking down your career its clear that the two dichotomous entities are obviously the theatre and film. Out of everything that has defined your body of work so far, what’s missing, notable especially due to the way things are going right now, is television work. With your history of working in a theatre company, and your film work, is there any temptation to break from the two of them but also find a loose kind of hybridity composed of a regular series like those on HBO?
I’m not attracted to television. I think that all the energy and all the attention is going to television now, which is interesting. People are very excited at the fact that they can have long character arcs and the writing is getting very good, but the most beautiful things about performing don’t always have to do with writing, and the most beautiful things about film don’t have to do necessarily with story or character. You know I like the performing and I like the pure performing and I like the poetry of cinema. I like the poetry and the formalness of theatre, and in television I don’t know it well enough to get into it. I’ve heard a lot of great work is being done with it but I just don’t know it so much. You know I’m a guy…I still work very much from a place of fantasy and I’d much rather be in an art gallery or watching dance recitals than watching T.V. Now keep in mind the emphasis is not really in movies right now, and the opportunities are kind of sliding around, who knows what will happen, never say never, but at this point as long as I have interest in theatre and film, just-almost socially-I wouldn’t want to be tied to one place and one character and involved in the whole selling of a television show. Whether you like it or not it’s still creatively driven by writers and ultimately advertisers in some fashion, and you can say that about film too but you feel it in a different way. Also, call me old fashioned and I may be a sucker but I still enjoy this kind of relationship you have with a director as creator, director as auteur and I often seek out these people that are making something that’s personal and specific to them and I like to attach myself to them and I like to be their creature, to be the doer of their dreams because not only is that good for me but it’s the only way to make things that aren’t calculated in a way that they suffocate themselves. I think you have to make stuff from a deep intuition and a deep sense of what you need and not-for me anyway- you can’t be thinking about the audience you just have to trust that you’re not a martian and you work through yourself and if its of value it’ll find its way. There will be like-minded people that will relate to what your dealing with or not- but as far as having contact with what your making, I think that you can’t have one eye on the outside and one eye on what you’re doing. You can’t do this to get that, I mean of course you can in life we do it all the time, but I think if you do it too much, you get drawn away from the task at hand and that opens the door for corruption. Then you start doing things not for themselves but you start doing them for something down the road for something- a place where you want to be. And I think when you start to do that then you’ll never do anything where you’re really present and you really lose yourself in a way where you’re fully engaged.
Throughout your career you’ve worked with a number of directors widely accepted as visionaries, whether its Ciminho, Scorsese, Anderson, Lynch, Stone, Von Trier, Spike Lee, Cronenberg, Wenders, Minghella, Waters, Friedkin, and that’s just your film career. It’s a veritable who’s who of Cinema. How does your process go when it comes to finding projects? Do you watch films on a regular basis looking for interesting people to work with? Do you read a lot of scripts?
I do a little of all of those things. I read a fair amount of scripts, I do love movies, I don’t see them nearly as much as I would like. You know as I get older time gets faster and faster and faster and I never have enough hours in the day, and so there’s never enough time to read what I want to read, to see the movies that I want to see, to meet the people who I want to meet, to do the things that I want to do in my personal life. That’s a beautiful thing and sometimes you get caught up in this kind of anxiety about how you spend your time. But back to your question, you know I don’t know how I find projects (laughs), I mean sometimes your appetite changes and sometimes you have to balance things out, sometimes you put out feelers, sometimes you cultivate things and sometimes there are directors who I’d love to work with but I can see why I wouldn’t be in one of their movies I mean there’s a practical aspect to it, you don’t just work with someone, it has to be a convergence of the role, the director, the situation, it all has to come together. Its not like I sit there and go ‘oh I have to work with this person and I’m going to do anything I can just to work with him or her’ it just doesn’t work that way, you keep an eye. Its like if you drink wine, how do you educate yourself about wine, you drink it and taste some stuff, and the stuff you like you may return to, or not and your always in the search for more things, more tastes. Also looking at situations, it sounds crazy but really a sense that you’re needed and you have a function. That you’re the guy to do the role, that’s important. Sometimes I read things and I go this is interesting but a lot of people can do this. I always feel most comfortable when I read something and think ‘Wow I’m the guy, I’m the guy to do this,’ that’s not always the case but that’s when I feel most turned on, which is kind of a half-lie because when I read something I sometimes don’t really know what it is, it can be an instinctive thing, and you read sometime and you go ‘wow I really want to do these things – I don’t know what they mean, I don’t know what the story means, but these are things that interest me, I want to exercise this curiosity.’
As incredible as the film industry is in the films it provides us, it is rife with contradictions and flaws. Being someone who has been involved in the industry for so long, working with Ciminho on Heaven’s Gate through to Wes Anderson on Budapest Hotel, what are the largest fractures that have given way to flaws over your time/involvement? Changes in the industry as an actor that stand out?
Many things stand out. It’s amazing for how much work I’ve done in film I’m so ignorant about the film industry, because I think I live on a set and I don’t live in the business of ‘the business’. Partly being in New York partly from having been a part of my own company and being on the sideline for various reasons, so I’m not the wisest person to say this but I can state some obvious things. When I started out directors still had power, and that power has been marginalized more over time. Right now studios don’t even make money, companies make money that is funneled through the studio system. Also, culturally, films do not have the same kind of cache as they did in the past, their just part of a bigger system, films are just content that get fed into this system, but where the interest is not in film itself its on all the stuff that comes off of film you know, there’s more energy for promoting films than making films, that’s very funny to me. You know it’s a world where the importance of actors is measured more by social media- tweets- than they are by anything else. A very interesting article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about how hard it is to gauge popularity now because there are so many delivery systems, there’s so much fragmentation in culture its so specialized, we’ve really gone away from a dominant culture that I think defined itself in relationship to people and now its- you know the advertisement people have become where the real power is. It’s selling of the movie that gets more resources and creative energy than the actual making of the movie. Those are some of the things that I think have changed. And you know there are exceptions and you know you make your way, I mean I can’t talk broadly about the movie business but those are just some of the fragmentary thoughts I have.
Is there anything you find more interesting about being an actor now? Using technology as a lynchpin?
Not really. I don’t want to be an old crank and say ‘oh things used to be so much better’ because that’s not exactly true. But there is you know a depression around popular culture now I think. And I just look for the things that interest me. Look there’s much written about it and there are people much more articulate about it than I, but I mean we can’t underestimate what the internet has done to us as human beings and I think there is a greater need for culture because were getting all this information and we feel smarter and more empowered but the truth is at the centre people aren’t in their bodies in the same way people don’t know how to deal with each other in the same way, there’s more depression and neuroses than there ever was, that’s kind of backed up by drug company profits you know. I think culture is still a place where we can have a community, and still have an exchange of ideas and still do things that can surprise and remind us that things that we’ve forgotten and also give us a new view, and hopefully see what cuts across cultural conditioning and politics and I think that’s the only way that we can survive.
I always find art movements of any kind inherently fascinating. What they’re striving for, what they’re shifting away from, the inception of the guiding principles e.t.c. In the context of the Wooster Group, What was it like being apart of something so-pardon the simplicity of the term- ‘new’ ? What was it like being a part of something from the ground floor, as opposed to joining a kind of lineage?
That was a very exciting time. There were a lot of people making things not with career intentions not thinking about tomorrow, as a community. People were making things with very little money and they created their own community their own audience. One of the interesting things about the Wooster group was, as it started out it wasn’t a group of theatre people, they came from other disciplines but they were making theatre, I think that was true in a lot of places, in the downtown New York scene in the 70’s and 80’s particularly the 70’s you had musicians making films you had dancers making theatre there was this cross-fertilization that was very immediate. You had a lot of experimentation. It was a lot of fun, people were social, people were motivated. It was a sexy time, people were mixing it up, people were trying to create worlds, that’s what I remember. With the Wooster group in particular, Liz was really the engine of it from the very beginning but the truth is we always thought the show that we were doing was the last and we were lucky to have a space and that’s what really helped us survive and also the commitment of the core people, but in the end we were making things from our own curiosity and from our own pleasure, not so much conditioned by career aspirations or even lifestyle things as far as- we weren’t thinking about money we weren’t thinking about being famous- in fact the mainstream culture was shitting on us all the time saying what we were doing was bullshit- it was only many years later that we got to be accepted and now in fact The Wooster group which I am no longer involved in but they continue- are quite respected all around the world and are something of an institution. Although I must say, a lot of the original people are not there anymore because they have either moved on or passed away or for various reasons, so now its Liz with a new generation of younger actors.
I watched part of an interview with Charlie Kauffman the screenwriter a couple years ago where he was discussing the notion of the varying forms of resiliency of theatre and film. To paraphrase, he commented that film is ‘dead’ in that once its made, its made, it is fixed, concrete, unchangeable. Whereas theatre is ‘alive’, eternal, in that its constantly being remade and reinterpreted. Being someone who is wholly intimate with both mediums, how do you feel about that notion? Does it impact the way you reflect upon your accomplishments in each field? I.e. you can watch one of your films and it’ll remain the same, but your memories of a performance or a run of performances may be changed through experience and recollection.
Well there’s something very romantic about something that can’t last. It’s a lot closer to life, it’s a lot more adult in a funny way-Listen film changes too, because the context of how we see it changes, so that’s not absolutely true that film is dead or frozen. Film exists and it will evolve for better or for worse, even films that are made they’ll have a life. I think, you know from an actors point of view there are many differences and I could talk for years about my impressions for the difference of the two, but one of the biggest differences is so much of the activity in film is about re-animating things, and I find that in your dealing with your making your score when you make a piece and then so much of the performing is re-animating that score, re-investing it, making it live again, whereas in film not always but often, your going in their and dealing with first impulse very much- you go in there and you shoot a scene, never to return to it again, you move on, where theatre you keep on going back, you keep on going back, you keep on examining the same thing from many different angles so the simple way to say it, for theatre for an actor you conjure, and in film for an actor you capture. I mean there’s obviously an overlapping of the two, but as an actor that’s the main difference, and I think that’s why there’s a lot of pleasure in films and films provide you with great adventures and the process of making a film is fascinating and film acting is always so mysterious because its only you know one part of a film and its mediated by so many hands its an interesting collaboration but I think essentially in the end theatre feels a little healthier because it feels like its better training for life, like its better for your character because first of all you address so much more of your whole self because sometimes you can do a whole movie that’s practically in close-up, that doesn’t mean that your body isn’t necessarily engaged it is but it doesn’t have the same level of engagement as a theatre piece where all the time your body/mind/voice/timing is integrated, is working in concert. In film it’s a collage, its cut-up, its edited, its mediated, now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, that can be very exciting sometimes what you provide in the collaboration can be made even better by your collaborators and sometimes it can be made worse (laughs) it’s a crap shoot but that’s sort of the fun part about it.
With the Wooster group what is so fascinating I think is the depth of innovation of what you were all establishing. How much do you think it helps and/or hurts collaboration, when it is with someone you know personally? Be it in theatre or film?
You know, it can be all those things. All I know is I find I make things and I work with people that I like being around and the people that I love. For many years my partner was Elizabeth Decompe and for many years I was her collaborator that was intense and not always easy but it was very gratifying, and now with Giada Colagrande I worked with her, and I enjoyed working with her, there is a complicity and a short-hand and a stake, we also know each other very well, so it makes everything a little more intense, a little bit more full. To have a relationship with someone outside the work it always depends, sometimes it can help sometimes not. More than a script more than a character more than idea more than anything else, what I’m attracted to is people, and I like to be in the room with people, that inspire me, turn me on, I don’t have to like them, but there are people who trigger something in me that I feel engaged in a way that is free and feels fluid and that’s always what I’m searching for that place to feel that I see clearly.
Speaking about directors you commented you ‘like the crazy ones better than the well-behaved ones normally because they tend to be the passionate ones. They never come after you if you’re holding up your end.’ Having worked with so many notable personalities, What do you make of this? i.e. is there a parallel or connection as you see it between creativity and chaos or desire?
Yes. To answer briefly. One very beautiful place for me as an actor is when you’re really able to give yourself to someone as material, as a thing, as energy, as a series of impulses, as a character, if your able to give yourself to someone and they need someone’s complicity and trust and you make something together, that is great because your better than you could ever be by yourself, you’ve had impulses that you’d never make by yourself, your stronger together, and those are the sort of situations you seek out, and you know its almost like if you seek a mystical experience you have to really get rid of a kind of egocentricity that the culture really tells us that we need and you have to make an offering and I think you don’t just offer yourself to bullshit but when you offer yourself in a sort of pure way and someone needs you to do something and you do something together without dragging your feet or worrying about what it means or what is in it for you, those are when the most beautiful things happen.
Was that attitude something you knew prior to getting into acting? That that was on the other side of the door for those kinds of collaborations or was it something you learnt over time?
No I’d say that’s something that’s evolved. I mean I’d say it was probably within my character but it’s only to see what are the most rewarding situations.
Which plays into how it informs choices you make and the response from people that you work with…
And sometimes even if you’re in a less than perfect project or situation sometimes that and you can trigger that kind of openness and flexibility . It’s kind of like you have to learn to make what you do sacred. Even if it’s a stupid comedy, I’m telling you there is something about approaching it-not with a seriousness- but with an attention and a concentration, that’s what’s most important. I mean its always about the quality of the doing, its what I do not what I think. I’m not an interpreter I’m a do-er. That’s my mantra.
Being someone who’s so productive, as well as so creative, taking on average about 3 films a year since your debut (and that’s to say nothing about all your theatre work) have you ever been tempted to direct on stage or on screen? Have you ever come close?
No. Because I don’t want to watch, I want to do.
Looking across the span of ground your career has covered, you’ve had your fair share of controversy, notably with Body of Evidence, Antichrist, and to an even greater extent, The Last Temptation of Christ. Having experienced those kinds of zealous responses to your films, is controversy something you think about at all in relation to a performance? How important do you think it is to push societal boundaries?
No I don’t think about that. Sometimes you think oh this could be a popular movie, or this is commercial, you do have those instincts but I mean I don’t sit with them very long and I don’t think about them too much because that’s not my job.
In a story that’s been rehashed throughout several other interviews I’ve read with you, its discussed how you got kicked out of your high school for a short film where you interviewed a Satanist, a drug dealer, and an exhibitionist. As magnificent an anecdote as that is, what it doesn’t really provide is a connection to so many other things about you. Being that you were from Appleton, we’re you always drawn to the unconventional, untraditional characters and segments of society? Did that focus unearth itself during your high school years or was it a feeling you’d always sensed?
I think it was always there. It was kind of in the culture as well. I knew there was something outside, I was always looking to other places to see where the real world was because while I wouldn’t complain about where I grew up, but the culture at that time to the American way of life to when and where I grew up in my family was all about productivity and making something of yourself as I mentioned before. And I knew that wasn’t necessarily how most of the world lived with a certain sort of entitlement and privilege and I mean I grew up very modestly and middle-class but this kind of entitlement and aggressiveness and this kind of competitiveness and careerism and drive for comfort at all costs and drive for getting ahead of the other guy at all costs I had a feeling there was something wrong there (laughs) so I think I was always attracted to people who either through their condition or their circumstance didn’t share those ideas or didn’t live those ideas and how they behaved and what they were interested in that were different than the values that I thought were the only ones that existed. So once you see that other side I mean I wanted to go right towards it, because I think like everyone you grow up with a certain dissatisfaction, particularly if everything is geared towards denying pain and just doing everything to increase pleasure. It was clear there was something else there. So as a kid it was just about being available to people and I just wanted to do an investigative magazine show, I come from a fairly square high school so I wanted to find the people who were most unusual and those were the people I interviewed and I goofed around and had some footage and went out for lunch one day and some stuff was left in the editing machine and someone poked around and looked at it and when I came back I was locked out of the editing room and told I was expelled. ‘ I said that’s fine with me,’ and you know never retuned. Then I left town.
Do you think that was a ‘crossroads’ type moment? Would you have stayed without that push, or would you say it was simply a matter of time?
I think it was inevitable.
In a past interview I’ve read you talk about going back to theatre when the time is right. Is the right situation for you an offshoot of your personality at a specific time or of career aspirations, or both? Did it, or has it, alternated more specifically at certain points in your life?
It’s a marriage of those two things... I mean I do try to keep opportunities coming that’s all…also my tastes are not necessarily popular tastes so I always have to be careful not to marginalize myself because I need resources and even though I’m not thinking about the audience while I am making things I do want the audience to see what I’m doing, particularly when I think its beautiful.
Being the stage of your life where you are, its obvious that you’re not remotely close to the twilight of your career, but as a result of the bevy of experience that you’ve accrued you are at a point where if you chose to you could reflect upon your achievements and your choices and your body of work. Is legacy something you think about? Either in casual reflective passing or when considering roles?
No, I mean I don’t look back so much. And I think that’s one of the things- whether its good or bad I don’t know- but it’s a benefit of being busy. I mean I like to work, because I think as an actor you need to work. I mean we’re like animals we need to eat- we’ve got to stay in shape to pull that cart. I usually have enough problems and pleasures and anxieties and excitement about what I’m doing to keep me from looking back too often... I think it’s really that quality that you know opens you up to experience. With the audience watching stuff happening to you, that’s what its all about. Cause you’re basically their story.