How did you get the part of Travis in Paris, Texas?
Nathan Lloyd, Crystal Palace
I was in Albuquerque, I think, with Sam Shepard. We were drinking and listening to a Mexican band. I said Iā€™d like to get a part with some sensitivity and intelligence to it. I wasnā€™t asking for a part or anything, I was just free-associating, talking, right? I got back to LA, and Sam called me and said, ā€œDo you want to do a lead in my next film, Paris, Texas?ā€ I said, ā€œOnly if everybody involved is totally enthusiastic about me doing it.ā€ Wim Wenders thought I was too old. He came to see me and finally he agreed to it after a couple of meetings. I just played myself. Travis was looking for enlightenment, I think. There was a girl on the film, Allison Anders. Sheā€™s a director now, but she was a student at UCLA then. She said, ā€œThat happened to me, I got that way when I was a teenager. I stopped talking.ā€ I said, ā€œWhy would you stop?ā€ She said, ā€œI felt that if I talked I would lose it.ā€ I wish Iā€™d used that a little more in the part. But just not talking itself is a powerful device.

Which of your films do people ask you about the most?
Sarah Haycock, Monmouthshire
Paris, Texas for one. Pretty In Pink was a huge hit for me. Molly Ringwald was awesome, a natural talent. Alien? Oh, yeah. I still get fanmail almost every week, pictures from all over the world on that movie. Thatā€™s one of the most popular films Iā€™ve done. Am I still working? Just occasionally Iā€™ll do something. Iā€™m not working on anything right now. I did this film with Sean Penn [This Must Be The Place, 2011] that was one of my favourite roles. I played the guy who invented wheels for baggage. I met the guy and talked to him on the phone. It was an amazing experience. He told me how he invented it, the whole thing.

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You’ve worked with great directors Hitchcock, Huston, Peckinpah, Lynch…. What the best piece of direction a director ever gave you?
Julie Murphy, Edinburgh
The best piece of direction? Leave me alone. Let me do what I want to do! I worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Hitchcock Presentsā€¦, remember that series? We had a whole sequence in a basement where we kidnapped and tied up a Broadway actor, a great actor, EG Marshall, me and this kid Tom Pittman in a basement. Hitchcock came up to us and said, ā€œYou fellows go down there and work it out.ā€ He let us direct the whole scene. No director before or since has ever done that.

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