PREMIERE: Who are your idols?

At a certain point, you have to get beyond idols, but certainly Marlon [Brando] was always my idol and that's probably the last [person I] idolized. I mean, I have a long list of actors who've influenced me and it's always an unwieldy list because there's so many people on it: Wallace Beery and many, many character actors of the '40s, Paul Muni, Meryl Streep. You know, a big long list.

What were your favorite performances of 2006?

WHAT'S YOUR TAKE? Premiere's Editor-In-Chief loves The Departed, but what movie do you think is the best of the year? Jack Nicholson at the premiere of The Departed. • Click here for more photos from this red carpet event. • Check out more of The 24 Finest Perfomances of 2006. Photo by Jennifer Cooper.

I thought, in fact, The Departed was the most impressive. The movie is stylized [and] a bit operatic. Everybody in the picture gives a pretty fine performance... Ray Winstone, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin. I'm very happy about the response to the two leading guys, Leo [DiCaprio] and Matt [Damon]. They got a beautiful response. Leo, oh boy, he's grown a lot. [He's] grown into his skin and all that. I was very happy about that.

I don't think you would say your Departed character is like real life Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, but maybe in studying him you saw impact he had on his world? [Click here to read Glenn Kenny's review of The Departed.]

I intentionally didn't want to relate it to Whitey Bulger, and approached it from that. But nonetheless, when you're in an area, you do hear anecdotes about it. [The Departed is about] a gangster in Boston, they relate it to Whitey Bolger. In a way is the reason for my choice not to play it that way. I don't know much about Whitey Bolger because I wanted to do something else.

What's your favorite line?

There's a lot of very, very powerful one-liners in there. There's some good one-line scenes. "And don't move till you're numb." I love that crazy scene when he's talking to the Chinese connection who doesn't understand what anything's saying. He's just kind of acting and gesturing.

There was a moment you startled Leo, right?

Yeah, we had one scene, the scene between Leo and I, where we'd pretty much done it one way and Marty [Scorsese] said, "Look, I've got to come back here tomorrow anyway. Think about if there's anything different you might want to do." So I called the prop guy in and said, "Get me a gun. Don't let anybody know it's there. Just hide it next to my seat." And as he was leaving, I said, "And, uh, bring a fire extinguisher." His eyes bugled out of his head [laughs] I'm sure he went in and ratted me out. But I picked a moment when to get that gun up at Leo. I think it gave him a little something.