Movie Interview: Acting weird

What was it like playing Ben, the suicidal alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas"?

I had a very unique connection to the character in "Leaving Las Vegas." When I read the script, the lines just sang to me. That script affected me deeply, not so much because of all the drunk stuff, but because it's about the love between two people who had been broken in life, yet had this incredibly beautiful, cool relationship. They were giving to each other without judging each other.

When I was preparing for it, I watched a lot of movies about alcoholism, like "Days of Wine and Roses," where Jack Lemmon gets delirium and phobias, and "The Lost Weekend" with Ray Milland. Dudley Moore in "Arthur" was excellent, I got into his idea of talking too loudly. With "Leaving Las Vegas" I wanted to embrace all those aspects and add something else -- make it fun and funny, not just to have Ben traipse off to the Betty Ford Clinic, or have him consider doing himself in. He wasn't a Skid Row person, he could still get cash from his credit card. He just sort of took himself out of the equation. I wanted to take the label off some of his behavior and really play up the love that these people still had. I mean, if you do drink that much, you're gonna pay the consequences and the bottom line is eventually you die.

Typically, great English actors like Laurence Olivier start with the makeup and voices and work backwards, while Hollywood method actors like yourself grow the inner psychology first.

Yes, but the best acting mingles the two. That way you cultivate longevity. I've seen a lot of actors who have not cultivated the more external technique and unfortunately what happens is they eventually intense themselves right out of business. They become so way-down they become that teardrop in the corner of the room.

Stanislavski said that nothing changes but change itself; so you try, hopefully, to find new ideas all the time. He also said that imitation was the worst form of acting. So when I was trying out Sailor in "Wild at Heart," my playing Elvis Presley for two hours was imitation at a higher level. I tried to think of it as my Andy Warhol performance, because when you take these big icons and make them your own, you then create these images over the icon. I thought if Warhol could do it with painting I could do it with acting, be Warholian.

You've had your share of critics, particularly for your role in "Peggy Sue Got Married," which your uncle [Coppola] directed.

Oh yeah, I was going through a tough period just then. I was very influenced by the painter Edvard Munch, and read this book about how he was completely slammed by the critics and got this idea that if you were young and great you had to be slammed by the critics. I remember the whole of Tristar studio flew up to the set and sat around my uncle Francis, and Francis cooked a big pot of spaghetti and said, "Look, this is the character and this is what he's doing, don't worry, it'll all work out in the end." So Francis was my champion -- he really did stick by me on that one. And I'm happy with the results, as well as with the critical backlash. I was so over-the-top I remember doing one scene with my cousin Sofia at the piano, and she was going, "Down! Down! Keep it down!"

You seem to be very supportive of your female costars -- Meg Ryan, Elizabeth Shue, Kathleen Turner, Cher, among others. But lately you've been working more closely with male actors -- is it different?

Because love is the white light at the end of the color spectrum, you can show anger, bliss, any other emotion, all of which makes more sense when acting with actresses. I've always felt an actual connection that is like a dance and which just occurs naturally. There's an energy there.

With male actors, it's not quite as magical. It's more technical, but still fun. Working with Sean Connery [in "The Rock"] was a blast, because he came on the set and he was, uh, Sean, and it took me three weeks just to get used to looking at him. But he was incredibly giving and dignified, and I learned so much from working with him. He was mentoring me.

And with John Travolta, it was all, well, a laugh. We were a couple of kids playing in the backyard together in "Face/Off." We were always teasing the other guy while muttering "Die!" or getting caught in one of those "Are we in trouble yet?" moments.

Do you have any plans to work on any projects with your wife, Patricia Arquette?

Yes, and we want to redo "The Thin Man," but the studios won't hire married couples -- they think it takes the magic out of the movie. There is this perception that couples don't do well at the box office.

But at this point I want to step back and recharge, maybe go to Europe and learn something about culture and art. It's time for me to go back to that learning mode, like when I was a kid.

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