The singularity of Christopher Walken is a precious resource. Yet ever since his Oscar-winning performance in Deer Hunter, few directors have known what to do with him. His most outstanding work has been with risk-taking directors who work on the edge of the mainstream- David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, James Foley. And it's no coincidence that the parts he's playing for these directors have been out there and then some. One of the great faces of modern American cinema, he naturally belongs in a movie like Batman Returns, which is where he makes his most recent appearance.

Onscreen, he is unmistakable: often an ironic, detached, almost ethereal presence, he is self-possessed yet fragile; if there can be such a thing as a menacing vulnerability, he has personified it. There is usually a hint of neurosis- think of his drill in Biloxi Blues; in At Close Range, the malevolence is barely contained by his sense of humor. There can be powerful force behind whatever he does onscreen, but also a sense of throwaway casualness and quirky, eccentric charm. He understands scary -funny stuff better than anyone- his performance in The comfort of Strangers, deeply disturbing and serious as it is, is also truly hilarious. Walken is fascinating to watch even when he is simply listening: he can pull the viewer in, only to withdraw abruptly into a remote, private place where his thoughts are his own. As that moment in At Close Range proved- when he hatches a plan to save himself- nobody broods better.

His talent is composed of many expressive elements: the sardonic twist or unforeseeable emphasis in line delivery, as if the words contain a private joke only he can decipher; dry laughter, by turns mirthless, mocking, and perplexing, often a substitute for something unspoken; laconic, playful use of facial expression as punctuation; a world -class grin, so wide his eyes narrow into slits and his teeth almost seem bared; the unblinking stare that can freeze what it fixes upon.

Take a typical Walken moment, a scene from The Milagro Beanfield War, an undistinguished film in which he has maybe a half-dozen scenes as a terse, pragmatic fixer/troubleshooter brought in by an alliance of businessmen and state officials. Walken pays a visit to the office of small-town lawyer-activist John Heard. Heard perceives a threat in Walken's calm matter-of-factness, and launches an unconvincing tirade to warn him off, expending ten times Walken's energy. Walken lets him finish, delivers an offhand, possibly thoughtful, "Mmmmm," cocks an eyebrow and purses his lips- then leaves, never relinquishing his cool composure. We will never know if he is intimidated, indifferent, or amused. -G.S.

You play a millionaire tycoon in 'Batman Returns'. What sort of person is he?

Well, I don't know quite because I haven't seen the movie yet. I'm always surprised when I see the movie; no matter what I thought I felt about it, the way it's put together and so forth reveals [something new] to me.... I play Max Schreck. Max Schreck being the name of the actor who played the lead in Nosferatu- did you know that?

Yeah, I caught that.

Did you, yeah? Somebody told me that- I'm sure it's no coincidence. He owns Schreck's Department store and many, many industries; he's a polluter. He gets behind the push to make The Penguin mayor of Gotham City. He's sort of The Penguin's human agent.

Did you have fun with it?

I did. I'm eager to see it.

What new opportunity did it give you?

Well it's a costume movie, and doing it reminded me in certain ways of being in a play. My clothes were larger-than-life, I wore a wig.... I don't usually do much physical transformation, so it was different in that way.

What ideas came to you from reading the script?

The way I approach a script is to read it over and over until I begin to know something that I can relate to. It's not always something I can name. It's really a matter of being comfortable, confident. Finally it feels right.

When I played Max Schreck, I remembered that scene in The Great Gatsby where somebody's having lunch with the gangster Wolf Scheine and notices he has cufflinks made out of human molars. Schreck was predatory, very harsh with his enemies, and I thought he'd be the type to wear cufflinks made of molars, probably the molars of his archrival. So I said to Tim [Burton] at the beginning, "Do you suppose I could have cufflinks made out of human molars?" and he said, "Certainly."

With a more fun, cartoon style, as with 'Batman Returns', is there no obligation to create a vivid inner life?

Not for me. Fun is the word and I hope that comes across. The people in Batman Returns don't have much to do with anybody you'd meet, so it's not really like approaching, say, the guy I played in Comfort of Strangers ('90)- a man who might actually exist. I found playing [him] very difficult; he made me very uncomfortable, because to play a person like that you have to somehow get near whatever that is. The camera looks at you and sees whether you mean it or not, and in a certain kind of story, in a certain kind of role, you have to mean it.

How do you build your performance in 'Comfort of Strangers' and what part of yourself did you bring to it?

Whatever connection I made with that guy is something I never dealt with. I just went in front of the camera in a certain mood.

What do you mean by mood?

A mood...a man who's deeply disturbed and yet highly functional- that's dangerous. Because the guy goes through life, deals with people, socially he's perfectly acceptable- and he is a true monster. It's a mysterious movie to me. The closest I ever came to naming it was that it was kind of a Hansel and Gretel story: Hansel and Gretel grow up and find themselves lost in the forest again-Venice-and they meet the witch again-which is me. A kind of repeating itself, and they end up in the oven, the witch actually gets them after all.

How did you work on the character's European style and manner?

I listened to a number of Rossano Brazzi movies-put his voice on my tape recorder and walked around with that for a while. I always liked Rossano Brazzi very much, and the way he spoke-he had a terrific way of speaking English. I don't know how close I got, but his voice was the one I referred to.

How about physicality?

Well-Italian man... I did have a good suit. [laughs.] I also had the idea that he always had something in his hand you never saw. If you see the movie, I have my hands in my pocket a lot -and it's the knife I kill him with at the end.

Did you really have the knife or was it-

In my mind. He always has that razor in his head.

He has a speech-delivered three times-about his father, the family history, mascara.... Why does he start telling the police the same story at the end?

Because he's completely insane. That's when you realize his mind is on this kind of loop.

So what he says about his father and sisters isn't important?

No, and I don't think it matters if they're even true. It's entirely possible he made the whole thing up. When I watched the movie finally, the impression I got was that all that stuff about his father is simply where his mind is, and nothing he said in the movie is necessarily true; that he's not an Italian aristocrat, he could be an American movie actor; he's a complete fiction-for himself.

Does he believe in himself?

No, it's just a way of getting through life and also a way of seducing people, drawing them into conversations.

What was your sense of his sexuality? He's very homophobic, yet he's fixated on this handsome man.

Bit that too-it could be that he just wants to kill him. He's after one thing; there was something erotic about violence for him. And from what I hear, there are people like that. [Grins.]

To play a part, did you work to create your own inner world?

No. My approach is much more oblique, I guess. When I studied acting, people used to say, "You make a choice, you pursue that. What choice did you make?" Thats the big question in acting class. It's great to do that to get started, but finally if what your doing is interesting, there will be things that you simply never thought of. You put your own ideas aside. I do, anyway. I guess some people can follow it right through, every step, but at some point I usually just have to throw away what I thought.

At some point you give up control?

In a way, yeah. You think you know something and then you get started learning the lines. When I study lines, the first thing I try to do is to hear myself say them in the way I say them myself-even if it's not suitable-at least to find out what your talking about to begin with. Then I have fun with it.

People's line readings in life are always surprising, and I think good acting has that quality- "Wow, that sounds like he made that up, like he just said it." In conversations we don't really know what were going to say next-something can happen, I'm talking and I notice the way you look at me and realize you understand me. People understand each other silently and you can make certain kinds of jumps in a conversation because that person gets what you're talking about and you can jump ahead to the next thing. So real conversations are full of these illogical turns.

One of the things that's distinctive about your work is that the words often come out in a surprising way. Are you surprised too, as you speak them?

Yes. One of an actor's most valuable qualities is the ability to surprise the audience, and I'm convinced that in order to do that you have to be able to do it to yourself.

Your performance in things like 'The Deer Hunter' ('78) and 'The Dead Zone' ('83) are much more emotional than the recent work. How important an ingredient is emotion in acting?

I don't know how valuable emotion itself is. There is something cathartic about watching a performance -not just acting, but dancing or singing. There is a little shift, a little change. I think that's what people mean when they say, "I was moved." It doesn't necessarily mean "I was moved to tears" but "I was moved in my mind." I call it emotional power and it's very valuable thing for an actor to have. There are people who are very stoic, very unrevealing about what they think and feel, and yet they have something about them that you take very seriously-and that's what I mean. As time goes by, I'm less interested in emotion and more interested in that. The ability to laugh and cry and get angry at the drop of a hat becomes less interesting-it's a facility, a technique, an interesting gift, but [one] that can be abused.

What kind of emotional work went into the Russian roulette scene in 'The Deer Hunter'?

The Deer Hunter? The atmosphere was very conductive. We were in the jungle, we were in the water, we had been away from home for a long time; we were ripe. If I made a good impression, I really had a lot of help from the people involved.

Did you do any kind of emotional preparation before shooting the scene?

No. There was a gun smacking me in the face, and that itself is hard to take.

Do you think that's going a bit far?

Well, I wasn't getting hurt. But it's something that one is not used to, and it does bring a certain kind of reality to bear-the idea that you could be in a position where someone could repeatedly do that to you and there'd be nothing you could do about it. There's a reality to that.

What about the scene in Saigon hospital where the doctor questions you?

That was interesting. We were in Bangkok. We shot it for a while and I had a number of things to say in the scene, talking about where I came from. And it was working pretty well and then right at the end, when we were ready to go home, Michael [Cimino] came over and he said, "Do it again, but this time don't say anything; do everything but don't let a word come out." That was the take we used.

What was your understanding of how your character gets sucked back into playing Russian roulette for money?

I don't want to sound like I know something I don't know, but I think that one thing about that character and his place and story is that Nick has this very dark side, there is some kinship with something very dark. He's just that kind of guy.

At the time it was said that the movie had political implications, that it had something to do with Vietnam. I never thought that when I was making it or when I saw it-the movie was really more about the ongoing relationship of young men and war. It keeps happening. They are young, full of life, and the idea of war is something adventurous, romantic, enlightening, exciting-fun-when the reality is that their legs are blown off.

If you had been of that generation, would you have gone to Vietnam?

I would have done what I had to do. I'm glad I didn't.

Would you have fallen for the romance?

No, no-I always wanted to be in show business. [Laughs.]

What did you do to create the reality of being in war in Vietnam for yourself?

It's funny, there are disjointed, unrelated things....I remember once when I was a very young child I was sent to a summer camp; it seemed as if I had been abandoned, that I was never going to find my way back. I was only up in the mountains with a lot of kids, perfectly nice place, but I remember thinking: I will never get home again, I will never see anybody again, I am miserable. I think I spent the whole time being as depressed as I've ever been. I doubt I was 10, but I can still remember what a horror that was. And finally when they came to get me, the relief-it was like taken off a life raft. I must say, I did think of that at the time of making the film: Where am I? I'm never gonna get out of here....

There's a brief shot of you and John Savage in a helicopter just prior to the prison-camp sequence where it looks as if you're not acting, you're really having the experience.

I was terrified-you're right. We got in the helicopter, the camera was handheld, and John Savage was behind me and the door was wide open and there was no safety belts or anything. [Laughs.] The helicopter took off and went right up, I think a thousand feet-up as high as the Empire State Building. I was looking out this door and I said, "John, grab my belt, hang on to me, do not let go whatever happens"- I couldn't believe I was sitting there, next to this open door without even a rope around me or anything. And the camera was [rolling].... I thought if the helicopter [tilted sideways], I'd be [gone].

That sounds like Cimino.

I don't know if he did that on purpose....

What went into the work in the scene where you shoot yourself?

The scene took place at night but we didn't need to shoot it at night; it was in a warehouse and it would have been perfectly reasonable to just shut the doors and shoot-there were no windows. But they insisted on shooting it at night, not only that but late at night. It was a very hot night, Bangkok, that time of year, and the doors were closed and it really was 5 A.M. I remember I had to something with the gun, and I had some idea about how to do it, rather complicated, and I had lines. I said to De Niro, "I don't know what to do here, this isn't right." He said. "Look, just do this." [Does three quick moves.] Three things-physical. And the way he did it was absolutely perfect. Thats what I did.

Do you find that just doing something physical-

Absolutely. I had all these mental machinations going, and dialogue that I asked if I could say, stuff like that-and I realized it just wasn't good. He said, "Just do this." That was it.

When you talk to another actor playing a character, do you ever visualize somebody else in his place?

For a certain kind of scene, sure. It never hurts to have some very vivid personal recollection to refer to-there's nothing like it. Absolutely: substituting something for something else.

Was 'At Close Range' a very satisfying experience for you?

Very. I had been out in New York with Sean Penn a couple of times, just out at night. I didn't really know him, but this came up and he needed a father and he actually requested me. My being in it was my idea-a good one.

Not having any children yourself, what was your understanding of being a father?

I didn't think about that. I just said to myself, That's my boy. [Chuckles.] I just swung it out. I remember the first scene we shot where I take him to launder the money, when I swap cars. I did that in one take and the director said, "Well, you sure know who he is" and I said "Yeah, sure." And it was like that really from the first day. He was sort of the dark side of the moon of Elvis or something-somebody called him a Hillbilly Lucifer.

Where did you get the accent?

That was a little bit of Muhammad Ali, with a bit of Elvis.

What areas did you have in common with the character?

[Long pause.] I think he really enjoyed his work. There was a real glee in stealing. And I kind of translated that to myself; when I have fun being an actor, it's a pleasure. I saw him with that warehouse full of people working for him, stealing stuff and having a great time. Bad as he was, he never bothered me. He was a bad guy who enjoyed life. Also, he only went after his enemies-he left the rest of the world alone. Somehow I could live with that. The guy in The Comfort of Strangers preys on innocent victims. I don't think the guy in At Close Range was interested in the rest of the population, he was only interested in...taking care of his family.

The character is fascinating because he really seems to mean it when he says, "Never say anything against the family," yet look what he ends up doing.

Well, he considers his sons...dangerous to his, uh, way of life. [Laughs.]

Did you push the character more towards the black humor?

Absolutely. There's a German word, Schadenfreud, celebration of darkness, celebration or glee of dark things. I think he was definitely of that bent.

What was your understanding of the speech you give about the coyote before you kill your son?

They were gonna cut that; everybody agreed that it was maybe not worthwhile doing it because it was so abstract, so potentially obscure. But I [told] them, the first reaction when I read the script was that that speech really is a parable-it's the sort of thing you find in the Bible. What he's really talking about is what he's about to do to that kid. Like an animal, he's teaching that boy something. And it's a good lesson. He wants to tell him something about life before he kills him.

How did you achieve the level of tension in the scene in the kitchen at he end when Penn points the gun at you?

He put the gun in my face and I got scared-yes, absolutely. Sean did an interesting thing. He had a gun and right before the take he ran off the set; I couldn't see him, didn't understand why [he'd run off]. When he came back he had a different gun-the same type, but it was different. And I thought, What'd he do that for? It really made me nervous. They rolled the camera. When he pointed the gun in my face, it wasn't the same gun in the rehearsal and I just thought, What'd he do that for? He did it on purpose-he did it to scare me. [Laughs.]

Was that okay with you? It didn't piss you off?

No! I did actually, I think I screamed, you know...but I understood that it was a good thing to do. All good actors do that. I did exactly the same thing to Matthew Broderick when I pointed the gun at him in Biloxi Blues, on his take. I set it up with the prop man beforehand. He was this guy from New York who was sort of like a gangster and he had another gun in his back pocket. I said to him, "When I say 'Give me the other gun,' say to me, 'No, Chris,' and then I'm going to say to you, 'Don't argue with me, just give me the other gun'-Oh'-and then he reluctantly gave me the other gun. He enjoyed doing it. Matthew didn't know what was going on. I think I actually threw the other gun down and took it from him. It was exactly what happened to me a couple of years earlier.

Does a part like the father in 'At Close Range' give you any insight into your own dark side?

Not really. I think as a matter of fact that I'm so far from it personally that it's one of the reasons I can do it. I play crazies all the time [but] it sort of rolls off my back. Angst...Torture...the twisted things that I play, don't exist that much for me. I have frustration about work-that's about it.

How do you feel about your work in 'King of New York'?

I enjoyed making that very much. That was unusual in that a lot of the scenes came out of a, I'd guess you'd call it, improvisational thing. In rehearsal we'd say, "Well, how about if I say this? What if the scene's about this?" A lot of the dialogue was fairly spontaneous. I think Abel Ferrara likes to work that way. A lot of directors would have discouraged that, but he in fact encouraged it-he's a very enthusiastic director, which is a good thing. It's "Yes, yes do that! Oh I love that, that's good, change that, yeah, yeah!" There's nothing like getting a positive response.

What was your basic idea for the character? Frank White's not like other movie gangsters at all.

No. That was one of my first thoughts. I thought, Well, if I'm gonna be this gangster, what's he like? What's he like? What would I be like if I was this guy? How come he's adopted by these black guys? I thought of him sort of like the boy in the forest raised by wolves-that he'd been abandoned, probably treated atrociously as a child. People capable of that kind of cold violence have a view of the world, I would think, that is conditioned by something very early on. So probably he had been adopted by these street people and suckled by them, so that he was one of them.

You gave him a very ghostly presence.

Yes, absolutely. In the beginning it was my idea to say, "Back from the dead." He comes back from the underworld. He says at the end of the movie, "I've done things in my life you've never even thought about." His references are from the undiscovered country.

The first moment, the shot of you emerging from your cell, is interesting.

Total ambition. What he has done all those years in jail is prepare himself for the moment when he leaves. He is completely unrehabilitated, he is exactly the man who went in, except he's meaner. He comes out like Lenin. He has an idea to change the world. He will do anything. Now he's going to do it. Abel [handled] the whole beginning of that movie very well. Frank White's all alone. In the limo he has the peace of someone who exactly what he's going to do.

What was behind that improvised stuff in the gang reunion scene-your high pitched voice and the dance moves?

Well, I grew up in New York and in the days before air conditioning the people would hit the streets. You'd see these old black guys in the street with their wine and their radio and they'd do these little dances-that's really what that was about.

The last line of that scene, about the dead Colombian's gloves, felt improvised, thrown in at the end of a take.

[Laughs.] Yeah, that's right. The man had smaller hands then I do, so it was hard to get those gloves on.

What were you aiming for in the last sequence where you're wounded, moving through the crowds in Times Square, and get into the cab?

I thought of a wonderful short story I read about a hawk, called "Hook." It's about this really dangerous bird getting shot by a farmer, and he lives for a long time on the ground with a broken wing. How the other animals are still terrified of him even though he's got this broken wing that he drags around. He can't fly, and the frustration of having been so-oh, it's a great story.

And there was that [quality] about Frank: he's sitting in that cab and all those cops, all those guns, all those people, they still won't come near him even though he's that far from being dead-that's what I wanted. It's like a ten minute sequence without words. [As scripted,] the movie ended sooner-they just decided to draw that out. It's potentially not that interesting to watch an actor sit for ten minutes, but there is something that holds you about that last sequence. He's mortally wounded, dead by the time he leaves the subway, but so long as he can move he will continue to be what he was-which gives the character a kind of stature.

What insight has acting given you about violence?

I always think that violence exists more in the promise then in the fact. Violence is a frame of mind. It's most effective served up cold. The really scary violence is the kind that's done just like business. Frank White would decide something and never let you know. That's the scary one, the man who talks to you and seems perfectly reasonable and knows that in an hour he's going to chop you up-it's really done.

Did you know you were going to be funny in 'Annie Hall' (77), where you seem naturally bizarre?

No. I guess Woody Allen saw me and saw a guy with all sorts of stuff going on. I don't know what that stuff is, but it's there, that's all. Whatever my own personal state of mind, it may not be a lot of fun for me to be going through. Certain emotions...You think you're going to die and everybody else thinks it's funny. Life works that way. It almost makes you believe it doesn't matter what you're thinking just so long as you're thinking something. What an audience sees is a mind at work. Is that mind interesting?

Jonathan Demme's PBS Film 'Who am I this time?' (82) gave you a chance to do something different. How accurate is the film to the actor's experience?

Aparently-it's from a Kurt Vonnegut story-it's based on a guy who did that and I think still does somewhere out in a town on Cape Cod; works in a hardware store and performs all the leads in the local theater. Actually I've never met an actor like that, but...I've thought of this guy as someone who is so personally and emotionally strangled in his life that he can hardly get a word out, but the minute you give him a part he's all over the place. I can't say I'm very shy, or that actors I know are shy. It's not shyness, but often actors are...very much to themselves. Quiet.

What did you think of your take on Stanley Kowalski in 'Who am I..?' Did you do it as well as you could or as well as the character could?

No, I gave it my best.

What about Cyrano at the start? That was pretty hammy.

It was really hammy, but I did try to knock their socks off. That was the last thing we shot. They had an auditorium full of local people, in the small town outside of Chicago. They were invited, given sandwiches or something, and we just had the curtain go up, I made my entrance as Cyrano, and I think we shot it in one take. They were like kids in a high school audience, thrilled to be there. It was perfect. I don't know if they would have continued to be that way, but...it was sort of like the real thing, like an amateur production of Cyrano.

How did you approach 'The Dead Zone'?

In that part I felt really natural, really. I behaved and looked and spoke pretty much like myself. The only thing that wasn't like me was his situation. In a case like that I have to just say to myself, what would it be like if this was your life?

You find a lot of nice, comic moments in 'Homeboy' (88), a movie that didn't really get released. I liked the dressing room scene, when you're getting ready to do your song-and-dance act.

Yeah. That's right. He was sharing a dressing room with a stripper and she was always putting his stuff in the wrong places. I find that around the house, you know-"Where did you put my glasses? I leave the house for an hour and you move everything." It was a very domestic little moment. I liked that guy. There were interesting opportunities.

Mickey Rourke and I were in Heaven's Gate (80) together; he had this tiny part and I was playing what's-is-name. We were sitting up there in the mountains talking about...dinosaurs. And I told him about this thing I had read in some science magazine, that there's a theory that dinosaurs really never disappeared at all, that in fact all they did was get smaller and smaller, there scales turned into feathers and they flew away-and that in fact dinosaurs are still with us, they're just birds. And Mickey said, "That's interesting" [Laughs], and he started telling me about this movie that he was going to do someday about a boxer and it was called Homeboy. You know, I remember also he told me at the time, "There's this guy, the fighter's manager, and you're gonna play this part." I said, "Okay Mickey, let's go." So almost ten years went by and there we were making it. And I said to him, "Why don't I tell that story about the birds and dinosaurs?" He said, "Right." And there is that scene at the beach with all the seagulls, talking about dinosaurs. It's completely disconnected from anything going on in the movie, but I think it's one of the things in the movie...It's real. Here are these two guys who are really kind of victims, talking about the origin and destiny of dinosaurs [Laughs.]

How do you feel about 'Heaven's Gate'?

I think that one of the things that happened to that movie was that the shooting ran twice as long as it was supposed to. [A big] reason for that was that the locations were so pristine and special that it required four hours of driving to get there. So half the day was used up getting back to the locations by bus or truck over these rough unpaved roads. So the shooting ran eight months.

I'm positive that that had something to do with the whole feeling of it. One of the things you see in Heaven's Gate when you look at the faces of the actors-if you knew the sequence in which it was shot, it would be very clear-early on, there's this energy and sense of being glad to be there, which as time went on became, where am I...? What movie is this?...Do I live in Montana? Was I born in Montana? It became like that. And I think it's visible in the movie, it contributed to its demise. You see a loss of focus.

You've played quite a few characters who are traumatized. Is that sense of trauma hard to work for?

No. I have a natural kind of foreignness-very hard for me to play a regular guy. There always seems to be something peculiar about him. And I think that has to do less with me-as a person I'm very conservative and predictable: I've been married for 25 years, I pay my bills, I have a very conservative, disciplined life. But whatever quality that is the reason that I am offered jobs, I think that has to do with the fact that I grew up in show business. I was a child performer with my brothers-I wouldn't say "actor," I'm still not sure I can call myself an actor, but I am a performer and I have been since I was 3 years old, one way or another. My brothers and I were models when we were babies. I did musicals until I was 25. I went to a school for professional children, all the people I knew were in show business, I simply grew up in show business in the Fifties in New York when television was born and it was all live, 90 television shows coming out of New York every week, live-Dramas, everything. Howdy Doody.

What shows did you do?

All of them. Armstrong Circle Theater, Philco Playhouse, Playhouse 90, Suspense, Danger,...My brother was on three shows at the same time, he used to run from place to place. There was a radio version of one of the t.v. things he did and when he couldn't make it I would go, because I had the same voice he did. So, it was like that, I grew up in that, my references are all there. I never played ball. As a result, my vocabulary, my references, the impression that I give has very much to do with that, and with the kind of parts I'm given. I came from another country.

Early on in your Career you were billed as Ronny Walken.

That's my real name. I'll tell you how that happened. When I was a dancer, Monique Van Vooren had a night club act and she used three guys as backup. She'd sing French and we would dance and provide vocals. She would introduce us at the end of the show and one night she said to me, "You know, I don't really like 'Ronny.' I think you are more 'Christopher.' Do you mind if I call you Christopher?" I said, "Call me anything you like, just don't call me late for lunch." [Laughs.]

Why did you say you're still not sure you'd call yourself an actor?

Because I don't have a process, I'm not a good impersonator, I have no idea how anybody else refers to something.

Isn't that what acting is?

No. I see actors who really do seem to transform themselves, not only physically but-it's just a different guy, a different gleam in the eye, a different tone in the voice. I don't think I do that. I have a certain clarity about my own point of view, how I refer to things; I know what things mean to me; I know what I mean when I speak. But I'm not sure...

A lot of successful, talented creative people feel they're frauds and it's only a matter of time before they are exposed-

No, I don't feel that way, because I've never made any bones about it: I don't really care whether I'm an actor or not. [Laughs.] I do care about being able to continue to do it in order to make a good living at it. I don't think I'd do it if I couldn't make a good living.

What do you think you would do?

I don't know. I thought about it and there are no alternatives.

There's no other need beyond paying the bills in your acting?

Oh sure: I have a great time doing it. But I wouldn't do it if I had reached as certain age and was still making the money I was making before-I made very little money until I was about 35. If that had continued much longer, I don't think I would be here.

That was about the time 'The Deer Hunter' came along?

Yes.

Anybody who's an actor will tell you that some days the work is better then others. Do you have any idea how to control that so that your talent is there when you need it?

Yeah. One of the things that happened to me as time goes by is that I am more consistent and I depend less on how I feel that day. One depends less on inspiration and it becomes more business like- which is good.

Is it basically a matter of concentration?

No, just...we were talking about one's own self-doubts, lack of confidence, stuff like that. Sooner or later you realize most of that is just vanity and nonsense. I remember from when I used to be a dancer, there is an expression among dancers, I had a T-shirt that said: SHUT UP AND DANCE. And acting gets like that too.

When you think about it, on all levels, mediocre or the level of genius-what was Picasso, what was Beethoven, Shakespeare? The guy who got up everyday and did what he did. In the case of certain people it's genius; in the case of other people, it's this or that. My father was a baker and he worked very hard, he worked everyday, long hours. And I know that he took pride in the cakes that he made. I know that people who build houses. People who cook-there's not really that much difference. You do what you do, and if it happens to be art-art is what people do. For a living.