I like these calm little moments before the storm, it reminds me of Beethoven.
You can play older than yourself. You can play younger than yourself up to a point, and then that just becomes impossible because you carry a weight with you that you can’t shift, unless you have very boyish looks.
I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father, and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up sometimes.
I didn’t do drugs. It wasn’t my thing. But the drink was terrible. Today when I look back, it’s like I was another person. You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would be an excuse. I just drank too much.
Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.
It’s becoming increasingly harder and harder; there’s no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren’t any, they don’t exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.
That’s what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can’t teach. You can’t give someone that. When you’re working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that’s where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.
As a drama student I got into Thirties and Forties suits.
I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There’s that period in the late ’90s, the early 2000s, where I didn’t do a great deal.
Well, I needed the work – that’s the honest answer. I haven’t worked for a while, a couple of years. So I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money.
I still don’t have a publicist. If I’m in a film, you have an obligation to promote it, I’ll do as much as I can.
The thing a drama school can’t give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can’t be taught, and you have to have intuition. It’s an essential ingredient.
Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director’s hat is only trying to justify his position.
But you see, I have played more good guys than I have played villains.
People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.
There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn’t have got Osama bin Laden – it took us years, but it happened.
People who know me, they know I have a sense of humor, I’m a bit of a joker, a bit of a clown really, and I would love someone to exploit that side of me and send me a romantic comedy.
I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.
It’s been said that alcoholics are egomaniacs with low self -esteem. It’s the prefect description. Being larger than life and yet your pride is crushed with self- loathing.
Rather like Batman, I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family, courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and justice.