I never really decided I wanted to be an actor.

I always kind of thought I'd end up doing something differently.

And then enough time past where I thought, I guess I'm an actor.

I've been doing this for a while.

I went to school for a little while in acting program, but I dropped out very quickly, and I was reading about people like the Performance Group, the Manhattan Project, Great off ski Robert Wilson.

So I went to Mecca, which was New York.

There was part of me that thought I was trying to be a traditional actor, but I kept on finding myself going downtown, going to loft performance's scene dance, and I got involved with a company called the Wooster Group that I ended up being with for 27 years.

And that was my day to day life.

My first IMDb credit is Heaven Escape, but that was very particular situation.

Someone said, you know, they're making this movie and it's Michael Cimino, and the Deer Hunter came out.

I had seen that.

I thought it was great and they're looking for ethnic faces.

The audition was you did one monologue in English, and then you did another language.

So I had a friend of mine fanatically right out that speech in Dutch.

They just assumed I was fluent in Dutch, so when I got there, should be no asks.

May be improvising the same talked me through the whole scene and he says, Okay.

And in Dutch and I'm like, I don't speak Dutch.

What?

Speak Dutch?

I was in lighting setup and someone told me a joke.

Jimmy No.

Heard me laugh and he turned around and said, William, step out And that was it.

I was fired from that.

So I don't really count that as my first movie, although if you look hard enough, you will see me.

I'm one of the cock fighters I fight.

Jeff Bridges is cock.

Don't you think I would get out of here while you do that?

Relax, mom.

Crank that radio up.

The first movie that I really made that I have a substantial role in was the Loveless.

Is that any good?

And that's really where it started.

Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery saw me at the Wooster Group, and they asked me whether I wanted to make a movie.

I'm attracted to strong directors or turned directors, directors that really need to do something.

You like to be around those people.

They inspire you.

They take you to places that you can't go by yourself.

And I'm not interested in doing a job.

I'm interested in helping on artists Do what they need to do there, behind the camera, they need someone to be there, Creature on the color in the canvas.

And I love that.

Okay, ma'am, you're back in action.

Putin was a movie that took a long time to get made.

All of the stone saw lots of actors because he first just wanted to cast a group of actors and then decide what characters they would play later.

He said, Yeah, okay, you're you're gonna be in this movie.

I don't know which role, which was kind of an interesting approach.

I arrived in the Philippines and my plane was the last plane in because there was a revolution.

Sit tight.

The movie's canceled will get you out when we can sew for about three or four days.

May and a couple of other people that were there ahead of time.

We're out on the streets with the people, and it was an incredible feeling because it was a revolution that happened for the most part, without violence.

They got the movie back on track and we made it.

The fact that that death scene in Platoon has become iconic as I was doing it, it felt special.

But that doesn't necessarily guarantee it's gonna be iconic.

All the elements came together, and I was just part of that.

When you talk about task oriented acting, it sounds like maybe that is an emotional, but it's very emotionally.

I'm told to run from here to there.

I know that I'm going to die at a certain point.

Doesn't get any simpler than that.

But once you engage, it wasthe like practicing a death.

And when I see it, I do get a chill.

I remember very well the first time I was nominated for an Academy Award.

I didn't even know when they were announcing nominations.

My son's baby sitter called me up, and that's what you've been nominated for an Academy Award with Move faster.

Remember, we're bringing God and man together.

They'll never be together unless I die.

Last Temptation of Christ.

There was a long search to find Jesus, and I wasn't involved in any of that.

Almost every actor I know at one point went in on this movie.

But I wasn't part of that.

I was teaching and I got a call.

Hate Martin Scorsese wants to talk to you.

Really?

So of course I went to New York and said, Absolutely, I'd love to do it He said, Let's do it when you're being crucified This flood of emotion comes to a flood of association comes to It's a very powerful thing.

That movie had a huge effect on me.

And when we shooting in Morocco, there was nothing else.

Modern life felt a 1,000,000 miles away.

I had no idea would be controversial.

Its intentions seem so pure.

It was exploring something that had to do with spirituality.

I didn't anticipate the problems that happened.

I think that was a particular time politically, that the religious right needed on issue to kind of circle their troops around.

And that became it.

When did you talk to Lula?

Uh, I talked to her this afternoon.

Venue is out wild at heart was a great experience because that role kind of did itself.

David Lynch, like, you know, brought out a hangar at one point and said, Will, this is your costume and that was it.

He also said, We've got to get you an appointment with the dentist and I said Why?

I read the script and it said he had bad teeth, but it shows really how actors put limitations on themselves.

Sometimes I never thought we were gonna do double dentures.

I put them in my mouth and I can close my mouth properly.

Anybody go like this, you're going to feel the service and like you're hungry, like you want some and you're gonna with some people that became a key slicked hair accent.

All that comes together.

It came out of externals.

That was good.

Here's what happened.

I read it in a parked car down the street.

Kids boondocks, sinks.

Troy Duffy was a first time director.

He's basically a bartender in the like movies, and he thought, Well, I could make better movies than when I'm saying so.

He wrote a script.

Karate Kid says it makes it open when he takes a bite on created bidding war.

And then there was a lot of problem with casting, and finally it went in to turn around, so they had to rethink how they were going to do it.

He tracked me down at the theatre, watched the theater show that he thought was wacky.

I don't think he made head in her tales about it, but he was a sport.

I just like the fact that he was a self starter and this was such a passion project for him.

Yeah, it was a gamble.

It was a very much anticipated, and then it had a fall from Grace.

It got a very minded distribution, but against all business models, it got popular.

It became a cult movie.

But I can tell just by how people come up to me on the streets, usually a very male audience, but not always of a certain age.

If they come up to me, I know it's going to be a book in accents person.

It's gonna be a guy that wants to talk about Detective Smecker, which was really fun.

Character flight boondocks Saints has a special place in my heart for some people.

They think it's trashy, but the people that love it love it so dearly.

The day I want the Boston police to do my thinking for me, I will have a tag on it.

So now give me a squad car and get me over there.

I don't think I can't harm you.

Tell me how you would have me and even I don't know how I could have myself shot a vampire.

Second time I got nominated.

I play a vampire that's based on the actor in Nosferatu.

I could watch a film and copy this guy.

That's where it starts.

It was a makeup job that took three hours to get in three hours to get out every day.

It was a complete package that took me away from myself in a very concrete way.

And whatever that happens, you connect with a kind of joy of performing on a joy of finding gestures that would normally occur to you.

You can't wait for inspiration.

You've got to do something and then it's really through action.

That stuff happens, make him wish he were dead.

Yes, and then grant his wish.

But how cunning warrior attacks, neither body nor mind jumping Spider Man.

I wanted to do it very badly.

It was competitive.

I remember I was making a movie in Spain and they flew a casting director to do a screen test in my hotel room.

That's how I got the role I had to fight for that role.

My friends were like, Really?

You're gonna make a cartoon movie, some of them snob, you know?

But I thought, No, this will be cool.

This is interesting movies from comics.

We're not a normal thing.

It felt like something new.

And then you had Sam Raimi.

He knew this material and he loved this material, and it was a double role.

We were doing a lot of wire work.

That stuff from me is fun.

It's like being a circus performer.

When are they going to make a circus movie?

I'm ready, Don't you know?

Me and Esteban always thought he was a baby.

I've always thought of you two as my dads.

Don't make fun of me.

I can't guarantee that I've worked with Wes Anderson four times now.

Life Aquatic was the first time it's different each time.

Don't imagine that Wes Anderson works just one way there with these master shots very long and he just fold parts of the ensemble in.

So I was on set all the time and it would be like, Hey, well, I'm doing to be in this shot Sometimes we'd work all day on one shot, rehearsing it, and then we shoot at the end of the day, and sometimes we do it in two takes.

It felt like theater.

When I say I don't normally do comedy, I find out I do comedy after you know, you play the scenes, you live in the world.

I can say In retrospect, that's comedy.

We're being led on an illegal suicide mission by a selfish maniac.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you misjudge the guy.

The literature that you used in your research was about evil things committed against women.

But you read it as proof of the evil of women into Christ.

I love that film.

It speaks the unspeakable gets play for some of its extreme violence and some of its kinkiness.

But there's a lot more besides that in the movie large every day is a trial.

Every day is shocking.

Every day is interesting when you work on a movie that that is heavy or dark, sometimes it would haunt you.

And sometimes it would just be so much that you'd be able to entertain some gallows humor and have a good time, right?

You got your power back and use your TV's VCR's a see what happened.

Have a nice state Florida project I was interested in.

Sean Baker is very pure.

He knows how to do this thing that I love so much in that his work with what's they're working with, people that aren't normally actors or new actors was drilling.

He created world, and they were just existing in that world.

They weren't thinking about acting.

I could be not an actor.

I could be a hotel manager.

There were people living very similar lives.

The story that we were making those people that were living in that situation told us how to make that movie.

So when you work on a movie, sometimes you're working with the guy that was cook last week.

You're working with a woman that's maybe a model, a woman that's been doing Shakespeare for 30 years.

Everybody has a different way to get there and I like that treats attorney disk eight.

Beautiful role.

Julian's a friend.

I've also been with him in the studio, I say in paint.

He had a very particular way to tell this story that I knew would be a bullshit biopic That would be on imagining of who we thought Vincent Van Gogh might be.

And there are lots of sequences of May painting.

There's no stunt painter.

I would have to learn how to paint, and Julian taught me so much.

Not just about painting, but about how to see things.

I felt very alive making that movie lad with eyes writers, Lady, come to this rock playing.

They're tough.

You make me laugh with your false Grum light house.

Wow, Rob beggars.

I saw the witch.

I knew nothing about it.

I thought, Wow, there's a filmmaker here.

Something about how he made that world and didn't make it a period film that points at itself.