William Hurt on Kristen Stewart, Bernie Madoff, and His Love of Dave Eggers Magazines

When you read a script like this one, obviously you have some idea of how you want to play the character -- and yet, you're well-known for the amount of research you put into developing your role. On this film, for instance, you spent a night in prison to better get to know your character. How much did your conception of the role change, from beginning to end?

The thrill of acting is the discovery part, so it all changes, but it has to change in a way that fits what is written. You can't just wander off and get interested in your own tangent.

Have you ever?

Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no. [Laughs] I wasn't sure if it would be a good juxtaposition with the other lines. I wasn't sure if it would be "in tune." But I did it after a while -- he convinced me it was legit. To me, if I was going to call myself devoted in a native way, it would be as an actor to a writer first, then to a director. Well, actually, my fellow actors probably come first, but in terms of serving the wholeness of the piece, I was taught that the words are sacred and you don't change a word of it. And I don't, I don't change a word.

You don't, but Hollywood does all the time. There are few scripts out there that don't get rewritten by other writers.

I think they haven't learned the pleasure of respecting the real talents that they've hired. They haven't surrendered to that talent and had it force them out of their shells, into new shapes. Shapes of discovery, shapes of challenge. I'm not there to tailor the role to me, I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.

That's a very interesting thing to hear from an actor. I mean, you'd think it would be a normal thing for an actor to sublimate themselves to a script or a director, and yet...

It would be normal if it was normal. The ethic, the credo became "Sell yourself." I think, "Sell yourself? My God, if you sell yourself, you sell the most precious thing that you've got." You were given yourself and you must share that. You're given this amazing treasure, how dare you even think of ever selling it! My God! So what are you trying to do? You're not trying to be the center of the universe -- you are the center of your universe, but everyone else is too! You've got some company. The great irony is that you and I both have to die. Funnily enough, the thing that's loneliest about life -- which is its terminal nature, its mortality -- is the thing that brings us closer together. Knowing that is the thing that makes us least lonely, if we can accept that. I give you, therefore, credit for the courage it takes me to confront it, because you have to confront it, too. I assume that. Now, we exist.

You say you're not trying to be the center of the universe. Other actors don't know anything but that.

That may be, but I don't know if that's so much their fault as it is the wool that's been pulled over the American eyes. There's been a trick pulled on them! There are a lot of Ponzi schemes going, and not all by Bernie Madoff -- my phrase is "Madoff was no one-off."

Certainly, celebrity has become a completely different thing than it was when you first started.

Yeah.

You began acting in film in your late twenties, and although you became a movie star fairly quickly, you didn't have to deal with a lot of what surrounds that now.

But I was an actor, and I still am an actor. In my book, when I look in the mirror, I see a guy. The accoutrements of my career are not around my house. My children know me as Dad. A guy. I see myself as an actor, actually as a repertory theatre actor.

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