Stellan Skarsgård

Or you can survive it and it turns out pretty well.

And I had very, very thoughtful and brilliant parents who sort of made sure that my head didn't get too big and that I was grounded as a person.

Well, they pointed out to me how different I was from my persona, my public persona.

And the important thing is don't get that difference between your public persona and yourself too big because that's when it happens, when it goes wrong.

It was fantastic.

I mean, he was a very nice man and a very gentle man.

But he also, he had like three brains going on at the same time, wildly.

And he was very funny.

And he was improvising.

He improvised every scene we had to do some extra takes because he had to get his versions out of his system.

But the improvisation was also good for us all.

I mean, you had to follow him wherever he went.

And also he would follow you wherever you went.

And everything became very different from the previous take because of Robin leading it to somewhere that you didn't expect to end up.

But what Gus Van Sant got out of it was he got extremely vivid takes and different temperatures in the takes.

And he got aggression in some takes and sort of niceness in some takes.

And he could cut those takes into any kind possible.

He wanted, when he was editing, he could take the film where he wanted.

No, and I'm not good at improvising.

I did once, once I was in Toronto at the film festival and Mike Figgis come up to me and he says, Stellan, I'd like to do a movie with you.