What was it like playing Ben, the suicidal alcoholic in “Leaving Las Vegas”?
I had a very unique connection to the character in “Leaving Las Vegas.” When I read the script, the lines just sang to me. That script affected me deeply, not so much because of all the drunk stuff, but because it’s about the love between two people who had been broken in life, yet had this incredibly beautiful, cool relationship. They were giving to each other without judging each other. When I was preparing for it, I watched a lot of movies about alcoholism, like “Days of Wine and Roses,” where Jack Lemmon gets delirium and phobias, and “The Lost Weekend” with Ray Milland. Dudley Moore in “Arthur” was excellent, I got into his idea of talking too loudly. With “Leaving Las Vegas” I wanted to embrace all those aspects and add something else — make it fun and funny, not just to have Ben traipse off to the Betty Ford Clinic, or have him consider doing himself in. He wasn’t a Skid Row person, he could still get cash from his credit card. He just sort of took himself out of the equation.
