If ended up just being a ball. It was just a wonderful job. The ultimate sort of fantasy reenactment the story involves him on one side of the mountain and me on the other. We're sort of stalking each other, and finally we come together at the end and have the huge, climactic mano a mano at the edge of a cliff. One of us loses I won't tell you which (laughs) the great extent of my working with sty was this big fight scene. Of course, he's tremendous at that. It's what he does best So it was great. You could hit him as hard as you wanted and he wouldn't even bruise.
And you?
Well, I had all of this padding on...(laughs)
On the Oscars:
I thought they were a little conservative, but predictable...I though "the Crying Game" was great. I saw it last September at the Venice Film Festival at 1 a., with three of four people in the audience. And I loved the film, but ...as a matter of fact, I sat there watching it with Ban DePalma [his long-time friend and director of his most recent release, "Raising Cain"]. I smelled something, I though something was going on, but after Jaye Davidson's first scene. Brian leaned over to me and said (adopting a deep police), "Looks like a transvestite to me." And I was furious with him, because I didn't really get a chance to test whether I'd be fooled or not. Brian said it was always the hands--the hands always give the gender of the actor away. Brian spotted (Davidson's hands) in the first scene and said "Uh uh."
On spending two years at the London Acute my of Dramatic Arts.
It's like being in physical training for two years. You come out there knowing how to fence and fight, how to use your voice, how to parse verse. You even learn how to screaming and crying on a purely technical level. Well, that's not the kind of thing they tend to concentrate on in the Actor's Studio and the Neighbor-hood Playhouse [representative American acting schools]. But that's very valid way of working, too; and the Englishmen are fascinated by that. They love American actors. The grass is always greener, I guess.
On his future plans.
Well, I leave at 300 for South Africa, where I'm going to be working on a movie for Brace Beresford called. "The good Man in Africa," with scan Cannery. It's a very satirical look at post-colonial British diplomats in a West African tinpot dictatorship. And I'm coming back for 48 hours for ArtsFirst. So if I can come back all the way from South Africa, just tell those freshmen they can come over from Wigglesworth. (Laughs)