I can`t imagine being somebody else. And anything I play, my reference is completely from the planet Showbusiness. I don`t know anything about anybody else, people that I`ve known all my life - my family, my brothers - I don`t know... I only know about me.

My father was a baker and a lot of people do what their families did and I could have done that but I wanted to stay in show business.

I don`t particularly like to do anything dangerous. And here I was in Bangkok (filming The Deer Hunter (1978)). I was in the jungle and in the mountains. Being an actor has taken me places that I never would have gone to . . . It`s been a very interesting life.

What I do has a lot to do with the words. My favorite thing is to have two scripts at the same time, and study them simultaneously in the kitchen. Go over the words, over and over, do them different ways, different inflections and rhythms. For me, rhythm is very important. I think we express ourselves as much with rhythm as with the words. It`s not what you say, it`s how you say it. I think it`s very true. If you start to say your lines and it sounds right, usually I stick with that. If it sounds right, it probably is right. It`s curious, how you`re not collaborating with anyone at that point, and by the time you get there with other actors on the set, usually what you`ve done at home makes sense, and it`s acceptable to everybody. The thing I have trouble with, because I`m so dependent on knowing my lines, is that if suddenly somebody says, Here`s a big speech. You`re going to do that instead," I get lost. At that point, I understand why Marlon Brando loves cue cards." - On how he memorizes his lines and mentally prepares himself for each role.

Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are. People talk to me about my choices. I don`t make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no - usually `yes`, because it`s always better to do something. What`s the choice? Somebody will say, `Don`t do that part, you don`t need to do that part.` And I`ll say, `Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house? I`d much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun.

I get up early, at six or seven, and have coffee. I usually read in the morning. And then, if I have a script, I do that for a while. Then I exercise at a certain time. About noon. I like to cook, so usually, I`ll be making something. And I have my script. My favourite thing is to have two scripts. It`s great to study two things at the same time. - On his routine.

I eat the same things all the time: fish, hardly ever meat. Chicken, vegetables. I`m fond of steamed sea bass over leeks. I don`t drink hard liquor. I like wine.

I always think that in movies or on stage, two people can be talking to each other - the audience doesn`t necessarily have to know what they`re talking about, just so long as they know that *you* know what you`re talking about.

I have this theory about words. There`s a thousand ways to say `Pass the salt.`It could mean, you know, `Can I have some salt?`; or it could mean, `I love you.`; It could mean `I`m very annoyed with you`; really, the list could go on and on.; Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.

Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important. It`s very important for me to know my lines, know them so well that I don`t have to think about them.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.

One thing that`s happened to me is I`ve been around a long time and I`ve played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I`m suddenly starting to play people`s father.

I was already 35 years old, and I`d been in show business for 30-plus years, and suddenly there was this big movie and I was getting an Oscar, and this enormous thing happened," he says. "In Annie Hall (1977), I played the strange brother who wanted to drive into oncoming cars. Immediately after that was The Deer Hunter (1978), where I played this nice guy who shoots himself in the head. Something happened there. The fact that they came so close together, and they were both important movies, two big public things where I was simultaneously . . . `disturbed.` That got the ball rolling for me in terms of being an actor.

I don`t choose that much. I just sort of take what`s there. I don`t have much else to do. I don`t have a lot of hobbies. I don`t play golf. I don`t have any children. Things that occupy people`s time. I just try to take jobs. I basically work so much because I`m lazy. - On how he selects his acting roles.

I`ve always been a character actor, although I`m not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even `pass the salt` - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I`m saying that. Maybe that`s what gives the impression that I`m saying one thing and thinking something else.

I would like to be a very old man and still be acting. So I feel lucky to have stuck around for this long. You have to be good and all that, but you also have to be lucky. I guess in everything. But especially if you`re an actor. So I got no complaints.

I have been in movies that I thought I wasn`t very good in. I think, Chris, don`t let your mouth hang open like that next time. Look at that facial tic. Don`t walk in such a self-conscious way! But sometimes, I watch myself and I think that I am terrific - and that is really nice.

I remember that. I was talking to him and I said how great it would be if actors had a tail because I have animals and a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they`re annoyed. You can tell whether they`re scared.

When you`re an actor, you do a lot of the same kind of thing. It`s great when someone gets you to do something that`s a little surprising.

I`ve never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I, of course, used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit, and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something.

The best thing for me is, when I`m not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines.

Bear costumes are funny... Bears as well.

Yeah, well I`ve always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that`s really where my training is. As an actor, that`s my training.

If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don`t ask anybody, just build a house.

I don`t carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.

No, but way before that, I`ve been doing little dances in movies for years. Yeah, that was an amazing chance. You know, at my age to be able to do a music dance video, very unusual.

I`m not much of an analyzer or a psychologist.

I make movies that nobody will see. I`ve made movies that even I have never seen.

Also, I think there are huge reactions sometimes, which are also mysterious.

When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it`s not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing.

I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.

I believe in saving money. I believe in having a house. I believe in keeping things clean. I believe in exercising," he says. "Slow and steady is a very good thing for me. It works for me.

Also for me it was different because I play a lot of villains and in this one I play a dad and I play a good guy, basically. He`s the Secretary of the Treasury. I never had a job like that.

My hair was famous before I was

There were years when I didn`t do anything but collect unemployment. I worked a lot, but I worked for nothing. I worked for 15 years as a kind of janitor at the Actors Studio. I would do manual things. I did lots of plays, theater workshops, for nothing.

I`m serious. I do not like the unknown or the unexpected. I cannot stand being surprised, yet as an actor I like surprise. I get very upset if my bills aren`t paid immediately.

I`d love to do a character with a wife, a nice little house, a couple of kids, a dog, maybe a bit of singing, and no guns and no killing, but nobody offers me those kind of parts.

They are funny and also they`re funny together. They`re a very good team. I wouldn`t be surprised if they made more movies together.

I would make a very bad killer in real life because I don`t think I could even pick up a gun, much less actually shoot one. Guns make me very nervous. They`re dangerous. I`m more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.

Because if I don`t know my lines, I really don`t know what I`m doing.

I think that movie sets when they`re good, are a lot like sandboxes.

An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it`s a play or movie.

I`ve enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck. Sometimes, it can be lots of different things, or a lot of those things. Or there can be reasons why you`d like to avoid it the next time. Like the jungle. I`ve made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don`t want to go back to the jungle.

People always comment about my hair. It is unusual for a man my age to have so much.

You know. it`s really tricky. People have no idea. How do you do it? Most of the time I don`t. I mean, I can`t. You just do it as well as you can. And, hopefully, you did some good stuff here and some good stuff there. The best part is going home in the car at the end of the day, and thinking, `I was good.` - On his process of acting.

Back home, I do the same things every day. Exactly the same. I eat at the same time, I get up at the same time, I do the same things in the same order. I read. I have coffee. Then I study my scripts, I exercise on the treadmill, I make myself a little something to eat. I am a great believer in the Mediterranean diet.

With stage fright you keep on doing it and eventually the fear goes away. If you stick around long enough you become very hard to intimidate. It is very difficult to make me nervous about working these days. There have been so many times when I thought I was finished, but it was not true - you just keep going. I am scared of sickness, pollution and crazy people but, work-wise, there is nothing to frighten me.

When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV.

They have a kind of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby thing going on.

The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can`t. You know, it`s an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.

When I know that, if I have no inspiration whatsoever, when I come and I just feel empty, I have nothing, I know that I can still play the scene.

I used to be prettier than I am, but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don`t like looking at them so much. There`s a sort of pretty thing about me.

I think that weddings have probably been crashed since the beginning of time. Cavemen crashed them. You go to meet girls. It makes sense.

I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn`t have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn`t want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business.

No. The soul is in the words, comes from the words, not research. [Research is] useless, waste of time. And exhausting. I just don`t know how to do it. I only know my own experiences. People are completely mysterious to me. Even in my own family I have no idea what any of them are thinking. - On if he does research to prepare for a role.

I try not to worry about things I can`t do anything about.

I don`t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you`re doing.

My father passed away a couple of years ago, but he was very old. He was almost a 100 years old. And, you know, he had a very good life. He came to America and he had a good life.

I put aside an hour every day to go over that monologue again and again for months, and every time I got to the end of it, I would crack up. - On Pulp Fiction (1994).

I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn`t refer to anything that`s real. If it`s consistent, if it`s entertaining, if it`s interesting, it justifies its being there.

And I think that when I play these villains, maybe what is different is that the audience sees me play these and they know that that`s Chris and he`s having fun and he knows that and he knows that and you know that and everybody knows that.

I live sort of in the country and I like that. It`s very quiet, it`s beautiful.

I`ve made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom.

People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.

When I don`t have any work sometimes, a kind of thing sets in where my mind shuts down. It`s almost like hibernation. It`s not that I`m unhappy, but I`m not thinking anything. Then I`ll go and watch television. And after an hour or two, I`ll think, `You`re just sitting there watching television and it`s not even interesting.` And there`s nothing to do. Life becomes meaningless. - On why he hates to not be working.

My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

I think if you do something effectively whether you`re the lover or the comic or the action guy or the villain like I play; movies are very expensive to make. Chances are you`ll get asked to play that part again.

Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.

I`ve made movies that we`re very successful that we`re a complete surprise, and I`ve made movies that I thought we`re going to be very successful that, you know.

Is typecasting really a problem?

I think that sometimes when they see me in a movie they expect me to be something nasty. I mean, I play a lot of villains and you show up and they think maybe... That`s why it`s good to defy expectations sometimes.

Lots of things. The script, the directors, the location, the actors, how much are they going to pay me? How long is it going to take? - On how he chooses parts.

At its best, life is completely unpredictable.

What I used to do was, I`d get the script and see who the character was - a spy, a lumberjack, whatever - then I`d try to dress the part for the audition, to give the impression that I was tough or funny or whatever the part seemed to call for. That was always a disaster. I would never get the job. If I learned anything it`s not to do anything like that. Now if they want to look at me, I go in and let them look at me. Let them figure out their own reasons for why they`d want to hire me.

I won`t do commercials either. I don`t want to sell anything. As an actor, it`s tricky. You have this platform and it has to do with your face, your charisma. It`s tricky when you endorse something because people are liable to believe you. Be careful.

I don`t even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible. - On guns.

Gotta have more cowbell!