Why did Sonny get involved in prostitution?
[Because of] Sonny’s personality and the way he was brought up – supposedly this is based on a true story. The true story that I got was that this was someone who was brought up from a young age, and it was actually, originally, in the sixties, and his family ran brothels in Dallas. Here was a kid who was in that world and he had prostitutes all around and they showed him how it was done – and he was a kid. He knew how it was done and when he came of age, he suddenly got in the business. He was taught this as an entry way of taking over the business as he got older. Did you hear a lot of wild stories from the prostitutes you spoke with? How did their stories help you prepare for playing ‘Sonny?’ Well, the thing that I guess that I had to do was, it seemed as if they had practiced putting on a kind of act. I had to differentiate what I felt was the true human underneath, what were the real feelings that they lived with from day to day, and what was the persona that they were acting for
