What do you mean ‘fumbling around?’

Well, I never saw what he was doing. He was always moping around and grabbing at me. But I think that was some kind of design with the director to get into my space. He was very good and Mark (Wahlberg) too, they are both very talented guys.

Mark Wahlberg would fight a bear, that guy. He’s a tough kid - he went to jail and everything. It was interesting that Mark would play that guy. I couldn’t quite believe it when I saw it. But that was the character and they both did them very well.

Your father was in the navy. What did he make of you becoming an actor?

Yeah, he worked with the British navy during the war, he was a career naval officer. He went to the navy academy he was 16 years old, off the farm in Virginia. He was a quiet guy and with my mother, they were the ones who pushed me into acting, which is unusual.

I kind of floundered around looking for things to do until I found my niche. But they were supportive. My mother was an amateur actor.

Apocalypse Now has gone down in movie history, not simply because it’s a great film, but because there were so many setbacks and traumas during the shoot. What are your memories of the film?

For me it was OK. I did the first six weeks and then came over to England and worked on The Eagle Has Landed and then went back and finished up Apocalypse months later - it went on and on and on over there. It was interesting to do it.

They had me in a cowboy hat and boots and it didn’t seem right so I did a lot of research and they actually wore cavalry hats and spurs as kind of an honour to the last century, the cavalry. And I found out in between that the head general for the Air Cavalry was crazy, he used to deer hunt twice a week along the Cambodian border and he got shot down and killed doing that. And they would go into north Vietnam and they would hook a bicycle from the helicopter and steal it, they were crazy guys.

One of your lines in the movie, 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning..' is famous. Do people quote it to you a lot?

(laughs)Yes! I run into people who quote that line it’s as if it’s a private pact between them and me and only they and I know it. Hey everybody does it. When I did The Apostle one of these preachers said ‘I don’t go to the movies, but I hear Robert Duvall had a famous line in a movie,’ I love the smell of gasoline in the morning’ (laughs)

You’ve directed films before. Any plans on directing again?

I got an idea for one we’re working on now. It’s kind of a border movie, which is very controversial in America, and very complex, nobody has a solution, 72 countries come across that border illegally. So we will try and do that but I don’t know where we’ll get the money.

You seem to work as much as ever. No plans to retire?

Yes, the work comes but not as much as it did a few years ago. You keep going until you run out of enthusiasm or until they have to wipe the drool or whatever. There’s always something out there. But they make all these remakes and yet there is so many good original stories, like this one in We Own The Night, out there.

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