Do you follow the reception of the films that you make as they come out? Or —
Yes.

Do you follow them actively? Or in the case of something like this, does it sort of catch up to you?
I want to know what happens. I want to know how people respond and the reception here. I enjoy watching the film with an audience. What surprises me was that there are so many laughs from an audience. It's a very positive story. It has a wonderful message. Don't give up. Okay, you have difficulties, but something will come through it.

In a project like this, in talking to people involved; screenwriter Ronald Harwood said he struggled for a long time to find the way to write this, and finally came upon the idea of the point of view, the camera being Jean-Do's eye; and that enabled him to write it. Julian Schnabel extrapolated a lot from the lives of other people in his own life, in terms of the way he would do something as simple as decorate Jean-Do's room. So everybody brought something personal to it. If I may ask, what did you bring to it in terms of your own personal interpretation, or looking at this character through the lens of your own life?
I cannot really tell you. I've lived a life and I've made, of course — I've been through things. But I don't put that into — how shall I say? — I don't put experiences into special boxes and use them when I need them. You get your experiences, and you have a treasure of experiences… which is you. I mean, it is your character. And then you behave the way you do because you have all this behind you or within you. What is important to me is in every scene I do in a film, in this one, what is it, apart from the fact I have to know why my role is this way… I don't have to love him, I have to understand him. I have to understand why he reacts the way he does. Why he behaves in connection with this other character the way he does. But what is most important is: What does he want? Here is a scene, okay, my character enters in the room and is confronted by these people here. So why am I there and what do I want? It's not a matter of what do I feel, it's a matter of what do I want. But I don't pick my own memories, and you understand what I say, I don't pick what happened to me in 1966 in the spring, and decide I'm going to use that in this scene. No. Maybe I'm using it but I don't know that I do that. It's my treasure of experience.

It's not something you chase after constantly.
No. No, no. I have to know "What does this guy want?"

This year marked the passing of Ingmar Bergman, with whom you made over a dozen films, including The Seventh Seal. Had you been in any kind of communication with him in recent years?
Yes, well I've been — all through the years I've been — we've kept contact. We talked over the phone. He hated to travel. So he did what he wanted to do in Stockholm, and then he went back to his island and stayed. I've been abroad now since the '70s really, spent very little time in Sweden. So we haven't met for a long time, but we have been keeping telephone continuous contact. And of course he's been ill for a long time. But it is… nobody within this business has meant more to me than he has. I was lucky enough to meet him when I was young and lucky enough to meet him when he was — well, he was young, too, of course — when he was working at this municipal theater in the southeast. And he invited me to join with him, and that started a long professional relationship, which I'm extremely grateful for. And nobody has meant more to me as an actor than he has.

The films you made also go across a wider range than is ordinarily assumed. One of the early pictures was — its title in the United States is The Magician, and it's a kind of macabre film, but with very comic elements as well.
Yes.

But over the years, going up to things like Hour of the Wolf, those harrowing pictures which he shot on the island of Faro, which mark the beginning of his relationship to that island which he made his home — going through those artistic journeys with him — it seemed as if in many of those films you were his surrogate.
Yes, I was. But I was not alone. I mean, I think in most of his films there were more than one character in it representing him. But, yes. What of course was extraordinary was the first years when we were at this municipal theater together…because it was a continuous development in a way with stage productions, stage productions, film, stage productions, stage productions, film… but with more or less the same people. And very often I think I could see elements in his choice of themes for his film scripts which he had been inspired to choose from the plays he had produced or directed in the theater. It was both professionally and also for my personal — how should I say it? — development… a very, very important time.