Acting was a way out at first. A way out of not knowing what to do, a way of focusing ambitions. And the ambition wasn’t for fame. The ambition was to do an interesting job.
I don’t mind playing older characters. I find it interesting. There are parts I couldn’t have got when I was 30 years old. So, it continues to interest me in the same way that it always did.
I played maybe one and a half games of Little League. The whole atmosphere of anxious parents and more anxious children was just too much for me.
The basic skill of an actor is, in fact, empathy, and that’s maybe not a skill, it’s a disposition. I am an assistant storyteller. I enjoy feeling useful to a team effort. It’s my way of finding a use for myself, a utility in this world.
I never followed baseball very much. As a kid, I never followed sports.
I thought it was funny. I always thought Star Wars and Indiana Jones were basically comedies. The humour came out of their relationships; it came out of the fact that we were basically types.
You always have to know what the ambition of the scene is, what the purpose of that scene is in the telling of the story overall, so that you’re there to support the story.
There is no barrier to Indiana Jones growing older. It’s not an age-based character. We can’t bang him up as much as we used to, maybe. But I guess I can pretend to have the capacity as well as I pretended before.
Baseball was a metaphor for America, both here and in terms of how it was understood by the rest of the world.
My ambition from the very beginning was to make a good part for myself, something differently to what lately I’ve been doing.
My work has always been important to me. The reason I continue to do it is because it’s so much fun for me. I love my work and so that’s what keeps me in the game.
That’s always my ambition is to create a character out of what will help tell the story. I’ve never been an actor to say my character wouldn’t do that, because he should do that in order to help tell the story.
I saw what luck and success I had as an opportunity to twist it up and do something different, so I’ve always sought out different genres and different kinds of characters.
I think you have to be very careful with effects that they don’t overpower the story with the visual element.
I’m still interested in perfecting whatever talents I have and continuing to grow as an actor and continuing to be useful to the telling of the story.
What I look for is identifying what the utility of a character is to the telling of the story overall. If I can identify that from reading the script, then I’ve got a clear idea of whether or not I think the character is worth playing.
I think the best movies are made not from a point of view that depends on your personal history, whether it’s the color of your skin, or the politics that you’ve had, or the place that you come from.
The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.
I had never even thought about doing something that I’d never done before or proving anything.
I don’t take trouble at all to conform a screenplay to my iconography. I don’t say, “We can’t do that – the audience wouldn’t accept it.” I try to take the limitations of what is required to play a leading character and then screw with them.
Whoever decided that Indiana Jones should wear a felt hat and a leather jacket in the jungles should have been shot.