Q:How do you chose your films?

Great scripture, great director, great character: in this orser.

Q:What did strike you in "Sweet November"?

It was a romantic story, in fact it came out on St. valentine day ( Note: in Italy it came out only one month ago, and that was the reason of the interview)

Q: Are you romantic?

No, I'm not. I see myself ike a tragic. If i think about a ove story, I recall Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. I can't forget my melancholic half. And Sweet November is tragic and melancholic too. It is devided in 3 parts: at the start it is an old-style comedy, like Tracy-Hepburn; in the second part my character and Charlize'one learn to stay together and in the third, when you discover that she is ill, they have to learn ti part. It is the meaning of love: what is a lovestory, what remain after.

Q: And what did you like in "The gift"? (Note: In Italy we are still waitng for this film... at the moment I don't know when it will come out)

My character: hateful, violent, brutal, reactionary.

Q: Raimi said he though you were not qualified for that character.

True, at the start he refused to see me, but at the end I persuaded him: he said that durig our talk I slowly became "bad" under his eyes.

Q: How could you act as a men who beat women?

Raimi said me: "Every time you said to you wife Hillary thas she is laying, hit her"; so, slowly, I came into my character's personality. The worst thing was hit Cate Blanchet, but she helped me: she screamed "Hit me, hit me', and I did it.

Q: Your long beard was a way to be a more credible bad?

When I want to Lousiana to start the prerparation, as I usually do when I don't work, I let it grow. Then Raimi forbade me to shave myself, because he wanted I was less recognizable.

Q: How do you react to the -usually negative- critics to your interpretations?

I think that they are too mutch personal; they wan to hit not the character but the man.

Q: Nothing to answer?

I am sorry I am not perfect.

Q: You refused Speed 2 but you accepted 2 new matrix: why?

Because they are not films, they are a world.

Q: How long will the traing be this time?

5,6 months, with stretching, boxe, kick, weights 6 houres a day.

Q: Any preoccupation?

I'll work next 16 months, just now that, after living in hotels for years, I've just rented a home for the first time. I usually go on the set with only a bag, but this time I want to do like L. Fishburn, who come with all his things, bed included!